Should customer service staff know what they are doing?!

I love talking to customer service representatives using Live Chat - I can think about what I say and record everything that's said to me. I run a few servers in the US, and I have to talk to the company quite a lot.. usually because something is broken and our website is down. The website is my livelihood by the way, so forgive me if I talk fondly about it! Anyway, when someone says "no, you can't do that" it's concrete.. and often I may know they're talking out of their grassholes, but this way I can go back to it again and again..

As for this hosting company, I have to say I've never been so frustrated by people running round not having a clue about what is going in than now... Their name will follow, along with a massive rant and objective breakdown of why they are worthy of naming, shaming and stamping into the ground.

I'm going to let off steam by poking myself in the eye with a blunt fork. Fun

I love it when I buy something and I get a nice warm feeling about the whole process - when I don't mind handing over my hard earned money, because I feel I've got something worthwhile and the whole experience has been good. Speaking for myself, this rarely happens. No, that's not fair - it's just the bad experiences are the ones I remember. Everything good seems normal, how it should be, and rapidly fades away from my memory. Deep in my sub-conscious though I retain a list of companies who I think have screwed me over, who haven't been fair, who've treated me like a piece of dirt, and who I'd dearly love to get my money back from.. (this is the slightly toned down version of what I'd actually like to get from them)

More often than not I find myself swearing and cursing the big corporations, the owners, and anyone who has got in the way. Usually I think about how I can get even, or worse still, how I can teach them a lesson. After all, they've not delivered on something they should have. Rarely (well, actually, never), do I do much about it.

Talk of going to ombudsman (who?!) or some independent regulator (again - who?!?!), end up being just talk - and do you know what, everyone knows that this way of thinking just lets the company get away with it. Some other poor unsuspecting consumer will have the same experience, and no-one will ever really know. These days people are getting together and having more of a voice (love the internet), so this is my way of doing it. I'm going to broadbcast people that have treated me well and say thanks to them here, and I'm going to broadbcast the bandits who are wallowing in my cash and have chewed me up and spat me out.

I wonder what people like BT, and NTL will say when I next threaten them with "I'm going to write about you on my blog" - will it make them listen. Yeah right. Will it give me some sense of satisfaction. Yep. Will it actually be completely ridiculous and make me look like a prat. Yep, oh well..