Incompetence? or Stupidity?

Earlier this year my daughter lost her husband. Anyone who has lost a partner will know what a difficult time this can be.

Over and above the funeral arrangements there are many administrative and bureaucratic tasks to be fulfilled. For the most part, banks and insurance companies, local councils and utility companies, know what has to be done and execute the processes efficiently.

And then there is Exetel and, subsequently, Superloop.

These companies have displayed a singular level of ineptitude that defies belief.

Over the last four weeks my daughter has contacted Exetel to explain that her husband has died and that his credit card, to which her broadband account is tied, has been cancelled. She has explained that she wishes to keep the account, just transfer it to her name so that she can take over the payments.

She has contacted Exetel via telephone and email. Has provided proof of identity as well as other supporting documents.

She has been handed off from Exetel employee to Exetel employee over three weeks. Despite their promises, not one of these people has taken ownership of this issue, neither responding to emails or returning phone calls as promised.

On Friday there was a light bulb moment. Albeit a dim one. One of the Exetel employees explained that my daughter had to make a new account application via Superloop.

Superloop are the parent company of Exetel. And, if you go to their website, it tells you that they cannot supply broadband services to my daughters address. Which is strange, as they have been supplying this service for several years.

To continue, on Friday my daughter fired up a new account with Superloop. She had requested the same services and also confirmed that her (VOIP) telephone number would be transferred

Imagine her surprise when later that evening her landline (VOIP) stopped working.

So, yet more phone calls to find out that her phone number had stayed with Exetel even though the broadband had transferred.

By then, at the end of the Friday fiasco, Superloop had created a separate, dummy acount, in my daughters name. Supposedly, this was to allow Superloop to capture the phone number.

My daughter was promised that Superloop would call her on Monday, during which they would merge my daughters new account, with the dummy account, to return things to normal.

And so, here we are on Monday afternoon and, surprise surprise, no phone call from Superloop. My daughter has called them to find out what is going on. More confusion as they seem unable to find any record of the dummy account. My daughter is now back to waiting for Superloop to sort things out.

Meanwhile, my daughter was just checking her husbands email account.

Exetel have sent an email stating that his account has been closed and how sorry they are to lose him as a customer. But they just wanted to let him know that he is now liable to a charge for the early closure of the account.

Needless to say, this has triggered another phone call to point out that he didn’t leave Exetel, rather, they booted him out, that they would not be getting paid. In order for them to forgo this payment, my daughter has now been requested to send a copy of his death certificate. This she has done.

By the way, the clown at Exetel, despite moments earlier, having been told of his death, asked to speak to to account holder.

We are now awaiting the next episode of this unnecessary saga.

My daughter cannot be the first person to have gone through this process.

Did they go through the same degrees of stress and upset that such a simple request has caused?

Like I said, Incompetence? or Stupidity?