Usual Attitude in Business

doesn't say they claim to be any good now, just had an "enviable" reputation in the past !!

Phil

In message , Peter Saxton writes

"General failure" sounds like a problem with your browser and their website and not anything to do with Barclaycard. I think Barclaycard are quite right, the transaction hasnt got anywhere near them. AFAIAA "General failure" just isnt a credit card merchanting expression.

He is probably using some form of third party merchant service (possibly via ACTINIC whose products drive his website) so he cant do the transaction manually. The guy sounds like he doesnt understand the technical bit. The quality reference seems to refer to their retail stores.

Do you think you are over reacting a bit?

There have been threads on uk.politics.misc about the cheaper credit card merchant service providers being subject to denial of service attacks this week.

Well it does "get up your trumpet" a bit.

DG

There is a reference to Actinic on the address bar so I think you are right there.

I don't think I am over reacting. Which bit of the following do you think is reasonable?:

Cannings wouldn't take my order over the phone.

Cannings wouldn't let me contact the company that takes my payment details.

Barclaycard wouldn't contact the merchant to say they hadn't had an attempt to charge.

Barclaycard wouldn't put anything in writing to confirm there was no attempt to charge.

The call centre monkey at Barclaycard lied to me by saying that he didn't have a supervisor when I asked to speak to a supervisor. He said there was nobody more senior in the building.

If someone tried to pay me and they were having problems I would try to help them. If someone had a valid reason for asking me to put one of my statements in writing I would oblige.

I know there are plenty of people around who approve of unhelpfulness but I am certainly not one of them and I will not be persuaded that unhelpfulness is a reasonable way to behave.

In message , Peter Saxton writes

All of the above seem reasonable to me. I will explain line by line if you wish.

This does seem unlikely. Its likely his supervising manager was in another building of course.

I wholeheartedly agree with you here. But I think you should just go and shop somewhere else.

I'd like to know your reasons.

I doubt it. Call centre staff are told to lie to avoid getting supervisors involved.

I have done.

I would prefer it if businesses had an "unhelpful" marker so I wouldnt waste any of my time with them though.

In message , Peter Saxton writes

That is their prerogative. Their website doesnt advertise an ability or willingness to accept telephone sales, and (as it seems to me) their CC merchant facility wont support this. I dont understand why you think they should accept a telephone order.

I cant see any reasons why they should. You have no right to know and I can see that the merchant company would specifically not want direct customer contact and I would expect any CC merchant company would not want direct customer contact. This would cause difficulties for everybody, including the consumer.

I cant think of any reason why they should. Again this puts them in an untenable position.

Again, just think about this. Why should BC do this? If they made such an essertion in writint they have no ideas where this will end, possibly in the high curt for all they know.

I think you have wasted more time since the event than before.

What you seem to be saying is because someone has no legal responsibility to do something then they shouldnt do it.

It reminds me of the last time my wife saw a car accident and tended to the injured. Some people would have just ignored it.

In message , Peter Saxton writes

Im not saying that at all.

The points you made above are (mostly) not a case of doing more than they have to do, there is (mostly) a good reason from their side NOT to do it, especially Barclaycard which could have introduced legal ramifications for all they knew and would certainly be a practice that they would not want to get involved in regularly hence not doing it at all. The shop owner was unhelpful, of course, and I think I have shown there was likely a technical reason for not taking your card details by phone.

But to report it all to Trading Standards is over the top.

Sadly that is true. But to use this as a comparator is a gross distortion of scale.

Anything that happens in life could have legal ramifications. Given that Barclaycard could include "Without Prejudice" and knowing that the intention was to show that the card had not been declined I don't think they were being reasonable.

Helping me to show the owner of the business that the problem was not with the card being declined could have alerted the owner to problems with his or his suppliers systems. The owner is supposed to have also owned shops so I don't see why the card couldnt have been put through one of those merchant accounts - assuming there wasnt some restriction on accepting phone called charges. I got the impression that the owner preferred to do things by rote rather than think of solutions.

Exactly. He was opting for an easy life, with his on line ordering system basically running itself, and has no time or inclination to sort out problems arising from any sources, such as (what appears in this instance to be) a niggling but effectively fatal incompatibility between whatever browser you happened to be using and the e-commerce service provider he was using.

Sure, that's a very bad business attitude, but if he chooses to piss potential new "difficult" customers off, that's his lookout. Ain't no law against that, is there?

There's no law against being unhelpful in that way but I don't agree that his marketing correlates with his behaviour.

I got a very nice monitor from PC World of all places.

So Cannings dont get my business in the future.