You had a particularly frustrating experience with a call line this last week.
It wasn’t the endless pressing of first ‘one’, then ‘two’, then ’seven’, then ‘five’, then ‘two’, then ‘eight’, then ‘one’ as you work your way though the seven levels of hell. This you could handle.
Although it was somewhat dispiriting to have the traditional muzak replaced by increasingly insistent messages suggesting you get off the phone and ring any number of other people up instead.
Of course, that could be the point.
No, what finally reduced you to a screaming jelly of irritation was the fact that every time you (finally) got to the end of the cycle, a sprightly voice would say ‘We will now put you through to one of our operators’.
And then firmly cut you off.
Except for the time you were connected to the Student Finance Department of the London Business School.
Sadly, you weren’t trying to contact the Student Finance Department.
You weren’t, in fact, trying to contact any Student Finance Department.
You weren’t even trying to contact the London Business School.
You were trying to get through to the Visa Department of the UK Government.
And you strongly recommend that anybody phoning up to enquire about visas seriously considers giving up and moving to France instead.
Particularly as when, on the five million and forty second try, you did finally get through and discovered that you had been phoning the wrong number after all and they couldn’t actually answer your query.
The only cheery thought is that you are probably single-handedly responsible for giving them a whole new idea they can add to the litany of why callers should bugger off, which can only add to everyone’s enjoyment.
How about the idea of a telecommunications company toll-barring your work mobile phones (all of them) for non-payment of the telephone account.
Their mistake completely, not yours at all, and was supposed to have been rectified by one of their minions some weeks earlier.
So, when you ring their nice 0800 number to say “what the heck are you playing at?!”, you get a recorded message that says you have not paid your account and you should do so, then gives you the option to “talk to an operator” but instead cuts you off without giving you access to the aforementioned human being to sort it out !?
And, the 0800 number is the only one that they advertise for contacting them on !??!
Hmmm. Payment is going to happen how, exactly? Annoyed and put-out customer is going to get to sort this out how, exactly?
Yesssss. Technology is a wonderful thing, but I’d be willing to bet that most of us would just like a real human being to talk to. Preferably one who knows what they are doing.
Gosh that is annoying! Serves you right for being so reliant on mobiles though…
Funnily enough the reason why I was phoning and not, say, emailing, is because I thought: oh it’s a quick question. Not really worth the bother of firing up the computer…
*hollow laugh*