Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

James Whatley wrote a post where he describes why he feels Carephone Warehouse should employ an evangelist. I tried to leave a comment but the blog has a horrendous registration process which I got bored with. So instead, I’ve decided to publish my comment here.

I’d rather encourage all staff into becoming evangelists, but that will only happen when they care enough about the brand to become brand guardians. Having nominated evangelists only works when they’re evangelising specific technologies - like you get with companies such as Microsoft and Apple. By demonstrating that you care to educate and listen to people about your technology, you end up doing the marketing bit indirectly and in a much more discrete manner.

My advice to Carphone Warehouse is for the senior management team to take stock of public perception and put in place a plan to change the culture across the company. They have a serious culture issue which I believe is management’s failure to evolve as the company changed direction over the past few years. Only then will staff care enough to treat customers as customers and not second class citizens.

Carephone should consider hiring new management, not tech evangelists. Change must come from the top, even if instigated and encouraged by those on the ground.

Read previous posts about my Carphone Warehouse rants.

Dear Charles Dunstone,

CC: pressoffice@cpw.co.uk

Do you have a personal crusade against me?

Last week I reported that your scandalous credit control department called me and asked for my credit card details. The department manager (AKA pig) agreed to give me 7 days to get into a retail store to pay the bill, as your stupid billing system is the only one in the UK that’s unable to accept my Irish company credit card (even though my bank has confirmed it has authorized it on every occasion). Hence why my payment was late.

During my heart warming conversation with the pig, he kindly enough informed me that I’d receive legal proceedings if I didn’t pay within 7 days. What a nice guy, I mean, pig. The very next day I received a letter from a debt collector asking for prompt payment. They were kind enough to add their charges too. So generous of them.

I really don’t have the time to play games with your stupid company, so I decided to call one of your monkeys and pay with my personal credit card. Normally, I’d just call and pay. However, I’ve been spring cleaning my desk and was in the mood to go through everything with a fine comb. Given that I canceled my account, received a PAC code from you and opened up a new account with O2 direct in August, you’ll understand (actually you probably won’t) my amazement when I noticed a bill for the month of October.

I’ve been told that my account hasn’t actually been canceled ‘for some strange reason’. I’m now awaiting a call from one of your monkeys to explain why I’m still glued to your ugly brand.

Can you please call off the dogs, cancel my account and jump off the nearest cliff.

Thanks and warm regards,

Your loving customer, Paul
xxx

In previous posts I’ve branded Carphone Warehouse as muppets. Rather than continue to complain about their disgraceful service, I took action by dumping them in favour of O2. Even though my contract was with O2 via Carphone, I’m much happier now that I’ve switched back to O2 directly.

For some reason, Carphone Warehouse has never been able to take payment from my Irish company credit card, forcing me to go into a shop every month. So as you can imagine my payments are sometimes late. I currently have an outstanding bill which I must clear to get them off my back. I expected them to call and ask that I make payment. However I didn’t expect (well, actually I’m not surprised), credit control to call me and ask that I confirm my post code, personal details and then proceed to ask for my credit card details?

As you can imagine I was a little annoyed as this is the second time I’ve been asked for my credit card details when they’ve called me. The lady working for who I can only assume was Carphone, couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t give her my credit card number, so I asked to speak to a manager. I was absolutely amazed by the manager’s attitude. In short, he was a pig. He (the pig), stated that HSBC advised them that it is perfectly ok to call customers and ask for their credit card details.

I called HSBC and after being put on hold at least 5 times by 3 different people, I can reliably say that HSBC does not ask customers for credit card details when they’re the one making the call. Furthermore, HSBC states that it has never advised Carephone Warehouse to ask for these details. I’ve asked HSBC to escalate my complaint in the hope that they will have a conversation with the muppets. I won’t hold my breath though.

I’m confident that there must be some criminals who know what Carephone is doing and pretending to be them so they can con people.

Oli Barrett forwarded my previous post to Charles Dunstone, Carephone Warehouse CEO, by email. Given that Dunstone hasn’t bothered to reply I’m assuming he doesn’t care.

Is it me being a little touchy or is that exceedingly bad practice? What can I do to take this further?