Customer service awards

Today's award for friendly, helpful customer service goes to the John Lewis Partnership.

I wanted to buy a fridge off their web site. It was well priced and the site had a lot of useful information - including annual electricity consumption. The only thing missing was the size of the shelf on the fridge door.

I phoned their customer service number (which was easy to find on the web site) and got a very helpful lady who unfortunately only had the information that I had found on the web site. However, she found the phone numbers of two of their stores that actually had that model of fridge in stock and when I phoned one of those, another friendly helpful lady went away, found a tape measure and told me how big the shelf was (and it's fine for what I need).

Top marks to John Lewis.

Bad customer service

I'm phoning O2 in order to get a PAC code to transfer my mobile to Tesco (identical coverage, half the cost, texts at 5p). I'm sitting on an 0870 phone line (4p a min to me, 8p a min to most people) I ended up waiting 5 mins to speak to someone and then she tied up more of my time by trying to sell me a better offer from O2.

If I hadn't been paying for the phone call, I might well have listened... Maybe they need an 0800 number.

As it was, even though they probably were offering me a better deal than I currently have with them, I suspect the Tesco offer is still better value, and besides O2 increased their tariff on me originally without warning me. (Tesco came up as best on a web comparison site and I don't want any frills)

I was 14 mins on the phone by the time we'd finished and I'd got all the details I needed.