Service begins after payment

Most companies are courteous until you buy. The real quality of the relationship becomes clear after a problem appears.

So when choosing a complicated service or a piece of equipment, look not only at the specifications but at the support:

• is a contact easy to find;
• does a live person answer;
• is the returns procedure clear;
• how does the company behave in a dispute;
• are spare parts available;
• how long does a repair take;
• can you move your data and leave for another supplier.

Automated support is useful for standard questions. A bot can report order status, reset a password and send instructions faster than a human.

The trouble comes with the rare case that doesn’t fit the menu. That is when the customer finds out whether the company has a procedure for exceptions or only an endless loop of four buttons.

Human support doesn’t always mean love for the customer. Sometimes it is simply more expensive and worse organised. What matters more is being able to solve a problem of the right type.

Dependence on a service with no way out is especially dangerous:

• data can’t be exported;
• the number can’t be ported;
• the equipment works with one supplier only;
• ending the contract is harder than signing it;
• support has no authority.

You can check this before buying, and almost for free. Send support a question of medium difficulty — not “what size is it” but one that requires looking at a specific contract or configuration. An answer within an hour from someone who read the question, and an answer three days later linking to the very help page that made you write in, describe two different companies, even if their catalogues are identical. Both know how to sell; they fix things differently.

The same test works in reverse: it pays to find out in advance how to get out of the contract. A company whose cancellation procedure is described worse than its payment procedure has already told you its priorities — just not in the section people usually read.

Good service doesn’t promise an absence of problems. It makes them fixable.