phone provider changed withour permission!
Morning Kevin,
Slamming is indeed a tough subject to broach given the OFCOM regulations surrounding the process of an order to transfer a phone service away. We are required to inform all customers who have such an order placed which we do via email however we're not allowed to call the customer direct regarding this as it could be classed as an attempt to retain a customer who is legitimately looking to transfer the service to a new provider.
Given this, we can only hope that customer who are indeed being slammed will pick up the email notification and get in touch with us. Once they do this, we are well within our rights to cancel the transfer at the customers request however up until this point we're powerless to do anything more.
It seems in this instance, the customer wasn't aware of the latest attempt that completed as they mentioned they were away on holiday so I can agree that in an situation such as this, the process should be more robust to ensure that the line isn't slammed. Unfortunately for both the customer and ourselves, our hands are somewhat tied
Moving forward, with the introduction of the new SIM2 process we will no doubt see a lot more of this type of issue as it will cover both LLU and BT network customers for both phone and broadband but will leave us in the same boat across the board.
With regards to reporting this to OFCOM, we generally do this however action only tends to be taken en mass when a number of providers submit reports of slamming from a given source so we tend not to see much of punishment being issued to the offending company until a significant number of reports are lodged against them.
In an ideal world we would be allowed a non-retentions style call to each customer who transfers their services away so that we can check the legitimacy of the order on the fly and cancel this where the customer didn't request it, unfortunately this is unlikely given the regulations surrounding the process as well as being a bit of a killer where resource is concerned from an outbound call perspective.
From memory in my previous role, there is potential for an ISP of our size to have upwards of 3000 to 5000 transfer orders open at any given time, once we add in the SIM2 process we would look to have this increase significantly. God only know what this would look like within a large ISP such as BT but I can only imagine that it would sit within the multiple tens of thousands!
I foresee that the best way of dealing with this is to ensure that we have a robust automated system to deal with sending out the alerts to customers as soon as the order is logged in the system to allow plenty of time for it to be picked up and contact to be made to cancel if this isn't something that should be happening.
Slamming is indeed a tough subject to broach given the OFCOM regulations surrounding the process of an order to transfer a phone service away. We are required to inform all customers who have such an order placed which we do via email however we're not allowed to call the customer direct regarding this as it could be classed as an attempt to retain a customer who is legitimately looking to transfer the service to a new provider.
Given this, we can only hope that customer who are indeed being slammed will pick up the email notification and get in touch with us. Once they do this, we are well within our rights to cancel the transfer at the customers request however up until this point we're powerless to do anything more.
It seems in this instance, the customer wasn't aware of the latest attempt that completed as they mentioned they were away on holiday so I can agree that in an situation such as this, the process should be more robust to ensure that the line isn't slammed. Unfortunately for both the customer and ourselves, our hands are somewhat tied
Moving forward, with the introduction of the new SIM2 process we will no doubt see a lot more of this type of issue as it will cover both LLU and BT network customers for both phone and broadband but will leave us in the same boat across the board.
With regards to reporting this to OFCOM, we generally do this however action only tends to be taken en mass when a number of providers submit reports of slamming from a given source so we tend not to see much of punishment being issued to the offending company until a significant number of reports are lodged against them.
In an ideal world we would be allowed a non-retentions style call to each customer who transfers their services away so that we can check the legitimacy of the order on the fly and cancel this where the customer didn't request it, unfortunately this is unlikely given the regulations surrounding the process as well as being a bit of a killer where resource is concerned from an outbound call perspective.
From memory in my previous role, there is potential for an ISP of our size to have upwards of 3000 to 5000 transfer orders open at any given time, once we add in the SIM2 process we would look to have this increase significantly. God only know what this would look like within a large ISP such as BT but I can only imagine that it would sit within the multiple tens of thousands!
I foresee that the best way of dealing with this is to ensure that we have a robust automated system to deal with sending out the alerts to customers as soon as the order is logged in the system to allow plenty of time for it to be picked up and contact to be made to cancel if this isn't something that should be happening.