My dishwasher broke down a couple of weeks before  Christmas and when…  Well you really don’t need or want to know the ins and outs of this  story.  Here I am still waiting for it to be fixed, one month and four, soon-to-be five re-arranged engineer-vists later.    Idly holding on the phone to speak to the helpline again this afternoon, I googled Hotpoint Customer Service, and found  a whole circle of Hell, populated with people frothing at the mouth and desperate to share their experiences.  The online comments might eventually have some impact on the company’s behaviour –  if enough people check things out online before they buy and are put off by what they find.  But it did make me  realise how very puny the power of the customer still is – there are comments on some of these blogs dating back to 2006, but Hotpoint/Indesit ploughs on serenely, not apparently seeing the need to change its ways one jot.  For what it’s worth I will be adding my rants to the other blogs, but more because it will help me unload some rage than because I expect it to do any good.

Thank you for holding.