Message from Jeremy: To all Tech IT Easy readers, who could obviously not necessarily remember the initial announcement, I have invited my friend Kari to write … about stuff that happens to interest him at the moment. 

This is going to be a personal rant. I’m used to crappy service as that’s what most Finnish companies excel at. Poor customer service is an everyday issue at work, where our Service Level agreements and our (internal) customer’s expecations are not managed efficiently. But to feel insulted? That’s something you need a formerly state-run company, they’re good at that. In this case, TeliaSonera, or more accurately, their Finnish arm, Sonera.

A while ago I realized that my trusty SonyEricsson T630 was finally breaking down. I also noticed that my cell phone subscription was a bit expensive and out of date. What better opportunity to take a look at the (not that) newly introduced phone + minutes packages the Finnish mobile operators have been trying to push. Yes, less than a year ago, it was forbidden to sell a subscription with a “free” phone, so this is something that hasn’t been yet widely adopted here. Yes, this is the same Finland that is home to Nokia. Shoemaker’s children go without shoes and all that…

Anyway, I found a rather nice (and cheap) package with SonyEricsson K610i – a phone I had already planned to replace my old T630. I really like the SonyEricssons for many personal and esoteric reasons. I like the UI better, they play nice with my Mac and they’re full of little niceties that are not mentioned in the manual. Even better, this was from the same operator than my previous subscription, the Swedish-Finnish giant TeliaSonera, which has had about 50% of the market in Finland. The prices are not the cheapest, the customer service… well, not the worst and so on, but, over all, they’re quite reliable.

So, I ordered the whole package online. The ordering process was quite simple and quick and I was to expect my new phone to arrive in 5 days or less. So far so good.

Five work days later I was surprised to find a notification card from the delivery company that they had tried to contact me and I’d need to call them to arrange the delivery. (As a side note, the delivery company and the Finnish part of TeliaSonera used to be one and same state-owned company, which probably explains why they suck at customer service) The opening hours of the customer service line? 9-16. I happened come home early, around 15.50, read the notification and quickly call the delivery company. I managed to get the delivery the same day. (Expected delivery time… sometime between 17-21, can’t give anything more precise… Good thing I hadn’t anything planned for that day. They have really thought about their customers when planning their services.) I asked them what was the deal about on the notification about trying to contact me on the next day I had placed my order and I couldn’t believe the answer: Eventhough I had entered all my details when ordering, the phone number isn’t delivered to the delivery company, so they couldn’t call me. This is the case with all deliveries from TeliaSonera’s Finnish retail orders (Sonera Piste). I just can’t do justice to the irony here, when you do business with a cell phone company, they forget to tell your phone number to the delivery company so they can’t deliver the package the next day. I mean, they should be all about communication? I had to wait for four days, because their external processes forget to include this little detail? Anyway, my expectations were 5 days and it got delivered on time, so my expectations were met. But I could’ve gotten in the next day? Come on!

I got the phone, everything worked fine. But things were missing. First of all, I was supposed to get earphones and Robbie Williams’ latest album on a memory card (those Memorystick Micro M2′s are small… really small) with the phone. I don’t so much care about the latter (except for the memory card), but the first one would’ve been nice. Anyway, each of those three (earphones, memory stick, the album) is just 20 euros each, so not a big deal and I could easily live without any of them. But I was promised them. The cover letter on the package also mentioned that there was a guide to use the operator’s many wonderful online services. I was missing this booklet. What a loss. I mean, they had gone through all the trouble to brand the phone so that if I accidentally mis-clicked something I’d be connecting to the online services in the same instant, something my call plan doesn’t cover - so that’s how TeliaSonera was planning to make profit out of me. Too bad I didn’t have any clue what all the ambiguously named services were or how much they cost. I’ve understood this little compared to how far they go branding and customising the phones in other countries. Okay, basically I was just wondering where the booklet was, as it was mentioned on the cover letter. No wait, I actually just wanted the earphones. I couldn’t care less about some online services I was never planning to use. So, I fired off a e-mail to them telling that I was missing the earphones, the album on a memory card and the little booklet explaining the various services they had installed on the phone. Once again, I put my e-mail address, phone number and home address with the request.

And I get nothing back. OK, I know their customer service sucks a lot so I gave it a week.

And I couldn’t believe what I got the exactly a week later. An envelope with my name and address on it written by hand containing and only containing the little booklet explaining the various services. No cover letter explaining anything. No earphones. No memory card. And no Robbie Williams. OK, I wasn’t expecting much. Just what I was lead to believe I’d be receiving. And I get an envelope with nothing but the little booklet. No explanations. Nothing.

I mean, it was like finding a dead horse’s bloody head on your bed in the morning. (by the way, the name of my subscription plan is “A Better Day”)

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