I can has customer service?

I've been putting off registering with a GP for ages, out of a combination of laziness and anxiety, but my husband took a couple of days off this week to catch up with household chores, and since he needs to find a new GP as well, I thought we could go register at a nearby surgery together. I phoned this morning to double check that they were accepting new patients, because I'd read that despite it saying so on the NHS site, in some cases that information wasn't up to date. The woman I spoke to said yes and told me to come along.

We went this afternoon, and the woman we spoke to (completely different from the one I had on the phone) was incredibly rude, saying that they were much too busy to process us today, that they had more patients than they could handle anyway and they shouldn't even be accepting us, and then proceeded to give us a lecture on filling out the forms correctly, saying they hadn't the time to be following up on every missed out bit of information, so we were to "pay attention and do it carefully!" In the time she spent complaining about how she was too busy to help us she could've sorted us out! I was absolutely gobsmacked. DH wanted to make a complaint, but as she wasn't refusing outright to register us, I don't really see what our complaint could be, other than, "She was rude."

As a related aside, I don't get it when people complain to their customers. It happened the other day when we were getting ice cream. We stood in the queue for ages and once we got to the front, the ice cream man proceeded to whinge for 5 minutes about how badly he wanted a fag, how it hadn't let up all day, how he couldn't be arsed to keep going, and I almost wanted to say, "If you don't want to be here doing this, then quit your job, but don't sit here and complain to me about it. I just want my ice cream!"

 

There's a receptionist troll in every doctor's surgery, I don't know why, but it's a universal truth! Bonus points if they have hairy moles and wear mismatched floral separates.

I had the same thing when I registered with my new GP, called to ask when I could register "oh just pop down before 5pm" Went down around 3pm, "oh, can only register people before 10am" - GRRR! I filled in forms anyway, and then suprise, they were able to register me and the DB after all.

Then the woman on reception picked through our forms and really bullied my DB into filling in his previous GP in the US even though he hadn't been to the doctor in 10 years and had to make one up (he's very healthy generally).
After he'd done this the woman who processed our forms was SUPER annoyed he'd filled in loads of pointless info as they only wanted NHS info and so berated him. heh heh,

Was quite funny really

On the plus side, my new doctor is excellent!

Bonus points if they have hairy moles and wear mismatched floral separates.

 

A friend of mine is a GP and she says the partners (the Dr owners of the practice) would be interested to know this was going on. And yes, it is a universal truth as commented earlier, that there is a receptionist troll in every surgery!! 

Customer service in the UK?! It is getting better, s-l-o-w-l-y. I think the more brits who visit the states the better the cust svc here!

When I called our GP to get info about registering, I asked how do we get registered and she replied, "Call on the doctor's surgery and they'll get you registered"  This was right after we arrived and I didn't even know what the 'doctor's surgery' was!  So, after she explained that that was the doctor's office, I asked her what that phone number was.  She told me it was the same as the number I called and that all I needed to do was call on the surgery and talk to registration.  I asked her if she could just transfer me to registration.  Finally, she said, "You'll need to COME IN to the doctor's office to get registered."  So, I learned 'call on' = come in!  Sometimes I think they're just trying to make it difficult!

i know this is a old post but i work in retail and I've got some complaints to air out here lol

Firstly, Yes pretty much all Dr's receptionists are the gate keepers and they act their lives are so difficult to be paid £14K to sit and take appointment. Poor dears...

Secondly, I'm originally from California and in the most part you can find decent customer services there but here, not so much. I've found places that have never disappointed so i frequent them alot but because I'm a manager in a store, i come across people in MY industry that are just plain, BAD lol.

One of the managers i know had a customer ask about a product and whether we had it up in our stock room. She flat out looked at the customer and said "no" and then walked out to have her cig cause she was going on a break. I was totally shocked that SHE was suppose to be MY manager.

However the general public that I've come across, do NOT help the customer services at all. In fact i think they relish in the idea that they're making it more difficult.
I had a customer call me to ask if I'd call all the shops in the north east to hunt down this hideous jump suit that i didn't even have any information about. She gave me a half assed description and then hung up when i said it wouldn't be possible for me to call for her but I'd gladly give her any numbers. ANOTHER thing we hate, chucking the change/cash/card onto the counter when we ask for payment. i always want to scream THIS IS NOT A DINER AND YOU ARE NOT LEAVING A TIP!, and half the time i want to chuck their change on the counter back but unfortunately i try to keep up to my OWN standard of C.S.