Tuesday 8 July 2008

BELGACOM - THE AGONY OF AN EMPIRE



This is BELGACOM, the biggest telecommunication company in Belgium:



It looks very impressive. But, actually the reality of this company can be visualised in the followting pictures (I took myself):





Yes exactly, that is the real BELGACOM. A company that has had a privileged situation as being the ONLY telecommunications operator until not long ago. In other words, they were the kings of the jungle in Belgium. No one could touch them.

And what happens when you are the king, the number 1....????? It happens that you can only go down, if you cross your arms and wait. That is what happens with that telephone booth.

The downfall of BELGACOM is a reality with the entrance of competitive operators (VOO, TELE2, ELEVEN, etc..). Of course The King is defending its territory with its big teeth. But not for long time.

Today I am going to talk about the customer service of BELGACOM, I wouldn't actually call it like that, but they do. My last experience with them, was very dissapointing and disgusting. They don't care about you as a customer, the philosophy they aply is: "if youdon't like you go to another telecom company". Well I see. They don't give a shit about the quality of telecom. service they provide, and their e-mail and telephone for customers is really ....sad, and pointless, it just makes oyu loose your time.

We have a contract with belgacom for the ADSL Internet connection in my office. (needless to say I think the offer of ADSL connections is very poor and expensive) Well, very simple, we wanted to change the type of ADSL connection, and have a fixed internet address (IP address). We filled up the form, and send it by fax. We asked (TWO TIMES) them specifically by email: "WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE THE CHANGE? AND ARE YOU GOING TO CUT OUT INTERNET CONNECTION? iF SO WHEN?"

They replied, in other works, "you will receive a letter announcing this change, and the internet access will not be cut".

Internet access is essential in our office. Without it, we cannot work. Maytimes, we have deadlines at concrete days and time (e.g. MOnday 16th, at 17h GMT+1) for submitting reports, or projects. If we do not submit it before the deadline, all the work done is lost, (à la poubelle), and I mean, several weeks of work.

Guess what happened.....Murphys Law???? NO, NO, NO. I call it BELGACOM SERVICE. They cut our internet access during almost two hours on a monday working day, and without previous notification. The letter came later. Can you believe this?

This is not everything. When I called the customer service to notify the interruption of service, they were not capable of let me know WHEN they were going to re-establish the internet access in my office. Basically our options were: WAIT AND SEE....

Well, my piece of advice to BELGACOM is this: wait and see how you will end up, once all barriers for competition are gone.

5 comments:

  1. some related links

    http://www.lesoir.be/actualite/economie/proximus-abuse-t-il-de-sa-2008-04-23-593721.shtml

    http://forum.astel.be/showthread.php?p=1253827

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  2. More use of its dominant position.

    http://www.xpats.com/xpats_news/news_display.php?Action=display#Doubts%20over%20Belgacom

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  3. Oh no, they are going to remove my lovely booth..:-(

    http://www.express.be/sectors/fr/telecom/huit-cent-cabines-tlphoniques-vont-disparatre-cette-anne/93253.htm

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  4. In all honesty, I have never experienced customer service as bad as Belgacom and I have lived in the US, the UK, Australia, Spain, Italy, India and China. Even a communist state has better service than the 'leading' internet service provider Belgacom. It is disgraceful. Absolutely disgraceful. The telphone operators are rude, incompetent and the waiting times are ridiculous. This company is a joke and everyone I have met in belgium in the past 6 months agrees. We need to do more to expose them!I have writted to tle Telecommunications Ombudsman about this - I can't even find a number to call/email address to write to for complainst on their website. A totla failure of professionalism - they should use Belgacom as a cse study a business school for 'how not to treat your customers' classes.

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  5. They really are terrible. If you live in Belgium and have the choice to go with anyone else then DO IT! My connection drops all the time, they do not care about it, and it is expensive.

    Some days I cannot even connect.

    I have never ever experienced such shitty service and like the guy above me, I have lived in a lot of different places.

    BELGACOM are crap.

    ReplyDelete