What's on your mind today?

Archon said:

I wonder why most publicly (government) owned companies/businesses/institutions have the most awful customer service there is. It's always slow, and you always feel like you insulted everyone by just showing up.

Click to expand...

its because you, the taxpayer, will pay them anyway

Archon said:

I wonder why most publicly (government) owned companies/businesses/institutions have the most awful customer service there is. It's always slow, and you always feel like you insulted everyone by just showing up.

Click to expand...

Vodafone are worse.

Archon said:

Sweet irony - I've just been to the post office and the experience is 10/10. Very fast and efficient service, pleasant and helpful workers...but they do have sort of a manager behind their backs.

Click to expand...

Well you know.. there’s always an exception to the rule

Archon said:

I wonder why most publicly (government) owned companies/businesses/institutions have the most awful customer service there is. It's always slow, and you always feel like you insulted everyone by just showing up.

Click to expand...

I'd agree if you said such 20-30 years ago, but things are changing now. For some countries that was never even a problem at all (GCC countries for example). But idk how the things in Serbia rn, it depends on a country

Let's take relatively profitable companies (airlines, factories, etc.). Those usually serve both strategic and monetary purpose. No one would buy from them if they had bad quality, 'cuz customers would just turn to the competitiors. Emirates, Aeroflot (before war in Ukraine), Singapore Airlines - all government-owned companies or government is a major shareholder there. I don't have to tell that the quality of their service is way better than private-owned airlines.

As for public transport and mail, it depends from country to country, and even from city to city, pure lottery, but it's not uncommon to have even that high quality

Heck, even government services became better mostly 'cuz of digitalisation. 90% of the time you don't even go to a place anymore - you just do everything in the app. But even if you get to the venue, you'll still be amazed by the progress made in the last decade

Archon said:

I wonder why most publicly (government) owned companies/businesses/institutions have the most awful customer service there is. It's always slow, and you always feel like you insulted everyone by just showing up.

Click to expand...

As someone who works for a Government owned company. I can tell you it's not slow, it's stressful yes but not slow. What I found out that customers are highly selfishly entitled and the customer expects a customer service agent to go above and beyond to try to do everything. Awful customer service might be the fact they might be having a bad day and they have not been trained and mentored properly most of the time training is nothing more feeding someone with a bunch of information and thrown to the deep end. They are given a bunch of information and expect to figure it out without very little support or mentorship or feedback. The only feedback is from the customer because they are in a sink or swim situation. I hated call centre work being monitored to every second and putting down when putting down when to take leave and being micromanaged.

Skylander said:

Let's take relatively profitable companies (airlines, factories, etc.). Those usually serve both strategic and monetary purpose. No one would buy from them if they had bad quality, 'cuz customers would just turn to the competitiors. Emirates, Aeroflot (before war in Ukraine), Singapore Airlines - all government-owned companies or government is a major shareholder there. I don't have to tell that the quality of their service is way better than private-owned airlines.

Click to expand...

You are comparing apples to oranges m8.

You can’t compare factories to Airlines (the former of which áctually preform better privately then state owned) mainly because every State Enterprise airline has a defacto monopoly on every and all national airports.

That said, many a private airline like say ANA and Starlux are on par in terms of quality (5 stars overall) with Singapore airlines et all, and that is with the aforementioned skewed market position (!) and who’s model in case of Emirates and Singapore is actually a conglomerate of multible private shareholders & market demand, rather then “just” a government institute, I.o.w. They are government owned, not even controlled, on paper only

Jetflag said:

You are comparing apples to oranges m8.

You can’t compare factories to Airlines (the former of which áctually preform better privately then state owned) mainly because every State Enterprise airline has a defacto monopoly on every and all national airports.

Click to expand...

I tend to disagree. The same Aeroflot has to face severe competition from S7 and Ural Airlines. They have to keep it good because even their own domestic market is harsh. Emirates and Singapore are strategic projects to take over the traffic from european hubs, they have to be better if they want to achieve that. Moreover, they don't have domestic market AT ALL, so their only choice is to compete globally.

Jetflag said:

That said, many a private airline like say ANA and Starlux are on par in terms of quality (5 stars overall) with Singapore airlines et all, and that is with the aforementioned skewed market position (!) and who’s model in case of Emirates and Singapore is actually a conglomerate of multible private shareholders & market demand, rather then “just” a government institute, I.o.w. They are government owned, not even controlled, on paper only

Click to expand...

Factological mistake. Emirates is 100% state-owned, managed by government institution ICD (Investment Corporation of Dubai) and isn't publicly traded. Singapore Airlines is 55% controlled by Temasek (Singapore's sovereign wealth fund). Calling both of them state-owned only on paper is wrong. Moreover, those airlines don't depend on government subsidies - they generate revenue on their own and operate as effective businesses.

Besides, the argument was never that "private companies are bad". The only thing I meant is that state-owned companies can also be effective and provide high-quality service. Especially if they operate in an open and fair market

Jetflag said:

You can’t compare factories to Airlines

Click to expand...

I surely can. They both operate in an open market and face severe competition. They both have to provide better price/quality ratio or be wiped out of the market by private-owned companies

Skylander said:

Factological mistake. Emirates is 100% state-owned, managed by government institution ICD (Investment Corporation of Dubai) and isn't publicly traded. Singapore Airlines is 55% controlled by Temasek (Singapore's sovereign wealth fund). Calling both of them state-owned only on paper is wrong. Moreover, those airlines don't depend on government subsidies - they generate revenue on their own and operate as effective businesses.

Click to expand...

yeah, This is getting into sematics on when is what Government or Business... But The UEA are a collection of Oil Barons (shareholders) who defacto run the service as one of their own family companies with (capitalistically) made oil money/ wealth. Its as much “public/taxpayer funded” as my neighbours cat m8, though I suspect they will funnel some of that into it. And 55% owned is pretty much what on paper means. Because it means that almost half is in the hands of (external) shareholders, who have to be pleased or they will leave.

Skylander said:

They have to keep it good because even their own domestic market is harsh. Emirates and Singapore are strategic projects to take over the traffic from european hubs

Click to expand...

Yes and as showed above in my previous argumentation, they are not “state owned companies” like say: tax payer funded public healthcare is, by any stretch of the imagination. They are not run by government officials or clercks but CEO’s, have multiple share-holders and investors to please who will pull the plug if they under preform market wise, and operate in their profit incentive like a defacto private business.

Skylander said:

I surely can. They both operate in an open market and face severe competition. They both have to provide better price/quality ratio or be wiped out of the market by private-owned companies

Click to expand...

And I surely can compare my grandmothers wheelchair to a Bugati because they roll and get you from A to B, but that doesn’t make it an apt comparison. Not only is the former a service and the other manufacturing produce which could be dubbed irrelevant for this particular argument, but like said: the latter state owned variant does not have a singular monopoly on the only raw material available. (or in case of airliners, infrastructure)

Skylander said:

Besides, the argument was never that "private companies are bad". The only thing I meant is that state-owned companies can also be effective and provide high-quality service. Especially if they operate in an open and fair market

Click to expand...

Oh on that we actually agree m8.. My point was the only way they cán do that is, and you actually highlight this quite well in your rebuttal, if they actually adopt a model similar too privately owned companies, ánd if they actually cheat by monopilizing the infrastructure. On a level playing field the rule is private virtually always preforms better.

@Skylander


And I just realized non of that had anything to do with customer support which is how gagi started this, lol #internetdebate

Jetflag said:

You are comparing apples to oranges m8.

You can’t compare factories to Airlines (the former of which áctually preform better privately then state owned) mainly because every State Enterprise airline has a defacto monopoly on every and all national airports.

That said, many a private airline like say ANA and Starlux are on par in terms of quality (5 stars overall) with Singapore airlines et all, and that is with the aforementioned skewed market position (!) and who’s model in case of Emirates and Singapore is actually a conglomerate of multible private shareholders & market demand, rather then “just” a government institute, I.o.w. They are government owned, not even controlled, on paper only

Click to expand...

ANA is awesome. Much cushier than the American airlines.

Jetflag said:

@Skylander


And I just realized non of that had anything to do with customer support which is how gagi started this, lol #internetdebate

Click to expand...

Haha, classic you moment

Hensmon said:

For almost 5 years I have been trying to move to someplace in the mountains. Ever since I experienced my friends lives in British Columbia in 2018 I knew that I had to try something similar for myself or I would regret it, and now finally I made that happen. Moved to Colorado last week and feel very happy about that. I now live in a small town called Carbondale, about 40 mins down the valley from Aspen. Here is mt. Sopris, that sits next to the town.

View attachment 3876

It took a lot of planning, wife persuasion and weighing up pros and cons to get here. The dream was to be able to downhill mountain bike/snowboard after work, and to be in a like-minded, 'young' community where outdoor activities is the way of life, but also have some form of 'cool' vibes to it. Also given that I have seven close British friends who live in North America, being close to one of them should be mandatory. That would also bring an automatic community with it, as I'd inherit all their friends. Game changer really, to not have to start from scratch. I also didnt want the airport to be over an hour away, becuase I travel so much.

That narrowed the options down significantly. Unlike Canada, the US struggles for very cool/vibey towns. I visited a few places in Washington, which I have a soft spot for, but just wasn't right. Thankfully Carbondale ticked all the boxes, apart from cost, which is astronomical, but this is a sacrifice worth making for lifestyle.

Click to expand...

congrats on the move brother,

Hensmon said:

There's also a small music scene here, but more likely cheese/commerical and no underground,

Click to expand...

they do now

*mic drops* DJ Sammy replied to my post