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Eddy Says
Eddy Says: The things I’ve seen… time to dial
By Eddy Temple-Morris | Published on Monday 16 November 2009
I’ve been on the phone a lot recently. To estate agents – no, I still haven’t found anywhere to live – and to all the myriad companies that I’ve ended up having some sort of relationship with, who need to know that I’m planning on changing my address.
It’s made me think about telephony, and how it’s changed. I’m old enough to remember using ‘dial’ telephones where each call was hand routed, and when making or receiving calls was a big deal. Now we just take for granted that we can call anyone anywhere in the world, for a fraction of the cost we once paid. We also except that companies – all companies – have a line right into your life.
When you move house you end up talking to a lot of random people and remembering which companies use third world call centres and which ones treat you like a dog-turd even though you pay them money every month.
It’s so easy to say ‘the ones with the Indian call centres are shit’ but it’s not always true. Yes, of course, the farming out of calls to companies in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad is much maligned, and can result in a far from satisfactory experience, but looking back, the most unbelievably incompetent company I ever dealt with were TalkTalk, who used call centres much closer to home.
When my phone and my internet inexplicably stopped working one day, for no reason, I got them to come out and have a look. The engineer told me, most convincingly, that another phone company had cancelled my line for no reason. I had to spend hours on hold to these people, to find out which company. After being systematically fobbed off, patronised and passed from one office to another for ages, I finally got the name of this company that had inexplicably and, according to the engineer, “idiotically” severed the line; some limited company I’d never heard of.
I had to ring around (with my cell phone), and after a few calls to BT, managed to track the company down to the Isle Of Man, only to discover that the company was actually TalkTalk themselves. THEY had cut my line, or at least another part of the company had, and that division hadn’t thought to tell anyone else in the same organisation. It was clear these people couldn’t organise a blow job in a whorehouse if they walked in with £100 wrapped around their erect cocks.
HSBC are another company on my ‘shit-list’. Their slogan ‘the world’s local bank’ always winds me up. Somebody should take them to task over that claim. They are, in my experience, actually the least local, on every level, clearing bank in the UK. I opened an account with them, or rather my dad did, when I was just a nipper and they were called the Midland Bank, to have somewhere to put my piggy bank savings and the odd birthday or Christmas present that came in the form of cash.
Decades later, we’re talking over 25 years and several bank managers later, I called up to get a loan for a new car. The last time I’d spoken to my manager (we were always on first name terms) he’d called me and asked if he could blag some Robbie Williams tickets for his niece. It was cool, we had a relationship. I’d call him if there was anything I needed and he’d sort me out, and vice versa. I liked that. If I’d ever needed a little loan or anything, no problem, we knew each other, he knew I was good for it and it was all done on a phone call.
So when I called up for the first time in several years to ask for help in getting myself a proper DJ-motorway-mobile I was surprised to be put through to an Indian dude I’d never spoken to before. He told me that I didn’t have a manager any more. I explained that I needed a little loan for a car and he told me I’d have to fill in some forms then they’d get back to me.
I was astonished, and explained that I’d been with the same branch for probably longer than he’d been alive, that we didn’t know each other from Adam and therefore had no effective business ‘relationship’ and please could I speak to my manager to sort this? He refused to put me through but said somebody would call me in within 24 hours.
We’ve all been here, days later no call, so I have to call back and explain the situation to some other guy, one of hundreds in an air-conditioned warehouse a Hyderabad, who confirmed that my days of having a personal relationship with my bank manager were over and this was as good as it would get. He offered me a rate so shit anybody could walk in off the street and get it.
I went through BT to find the number of someone at my actual branch and when I talked to her she was very apologetic and embarrassed. She told me that most of the local staff had been sacked and she was one of just a handful of people left working, and that all calls were going overseas to be dealt with internationally. Fully aware of the irony of her company’s strapline, she sounded crestfallen, gutted even, that the beloved bank she’d worked for, for years, had become ‘the world’s least local bank’ after being bought by a big Chinese company who only cared about their profit margin.
So I switched to Barclays, who seem to appreciate that it’s all about personal relationships and, in my experience, value their loyal customers in a more traditional way.
But it’s not always bad, and it’s dangerous to assume that just because you’re talking to somebody thousands of miles away, that you won’t get treated well. The flip side of the HSBC situation happened to me much more recently. My Blackberry phone wasn’t working, catastrophically not working. T-Mobile, in a British call centre, couldn’t help – their tech support people just weren’t up to the job. My phone and its software had corrupted and wiped out my entire computer back up, so I independently found the number for Blackberry in the US and ended up on the phone to them.
They were awesome. I was sitting in North Holloway, on a free call to a Kurdish Iraqi girl programmer in a North American call centre, who took the time to sort everything and check it was all working OK. This blew my mind. They even have a Twitter page where you can ask questions, and get dealt with really quickly and easily. Of course, an Americans expectation of customer service is always much higher than our own.
Back to phone gripes, and one modern phone phenomenon that really gets my goat is the ‘courtesy call’:
“Hello sir, my name is [insert boring name here] from [insert almost any British company here] and this is a courtesy call to [basically sell you something, or upgrade something and squeeze more money out of you or to tell you about another service, which will, yes, cost you more money…]”
I began politely, in the old days, just saying no thanks. This progressed to a slightly more aggressive interrogatory approach: “Are you aware this is an ex-directory number?” or “Since when is it courteous to cold call someone asking them for money…?” Which worked up to a point, but these people develop skins so thick that tranquilliser darts would bounce off, so now I unlock my inner Hannibal Lector.
This is my standard now:
[Friendly and smiley] “Hi, what’s your name?”
“It’s Andrew, sir”
“Don’t call me sir, call me Eddy. What’s the name of your company again?”
“It’s Global Feltch Ltd…”
“And which office are you in Andrew?”
“I’m in the Berkshire office”
“And your surname is…”
“Erm… Feltchworthy…”
[change of tone] “Right, Andrew Feltchworthy, of the Berkshire office of Global Feltch Ltd, this is an ex directory number. And don’t say this number was randomly generated, because we both know that is a lie and you’re looking at a list of numbers and calling them in succession. If I EVER get another call from ANYONE at Global Feltch Ltd, I will hold YOU personally responsible. I will come to the Berkshire Office, I will find you, Andrew, and I will strangle you with the cord of the phone you are using right now, are we 100% clear on that…?”
“Erm, I… aah… well… sir, I…”
“Andrew, are you going to take my number off that list now and never call it again?”
This is the only thing that seems to work. I don’t like coming across like a psychopath but in this day and age you simply have to resort to the most ridiculous behaviour to get anything done.
If I ever find somewhere to live (actually, if all goes according to plan then I HAVE to move in three weeks, come hell or high water), then I am sure-as-shit going to check, this time, with Tiscali (my phone provider), that they give me a fresh number.
My home phone number turned out to be somebody else’s number, an old one, belonging to an Irish woman called Mary. I’d get calls, I still do, at all hours of the day or night, either from companies trying to sell stuff to her, or from her really stupid and frequently drunk friends. When I was a kid, it was considered normal to tell ‘Irish jokes’. It seems ridiculous now, but this experience pandered to the most stereotypical 1970s view. Here’s my average conversation (you have to imagine her a bit like Mrs Doyle from ‘Father Ted’):
“Hello”
“Halllloooooooooo, is Mary dare?”
“No, sorry Mary doesn’t live here, they’ve given me her old number”
“Bot is she dare doh?”
“No, she’s not here, as I explained, this is not Mary’s flat, it’s mine, nobody called Mary has EVER lived here…”
“Bot IS she dare doh?”
“Look, you’ve got the wrong number, please just leave me alone, there is NOBODY CALLED MARY LIVING HERE AND THIS FLAT HAS BEEN MARY-FREE SINCE AT LEAST 1965”
“Are you sure now, cos dis is her number here, is she not dare..?”
*click*
These days I am less polite, even to the point of having a little fun. My favourites this year, which seem to have put paid to most of Mary’s personal calls, are:
“I’m, afraid Mary can’t come to the phone, she has her lips around my penis”
and
“Mary says you’re a total cunt and she never wants to speak to you again”
and
“Sorry she’s a bit busy being gang-raped by a posse of Russian sailors”
One last gripe. In May I booked a hotel, through Hotels.com, on the Isle of Wight when I was DJing at the festival. On the ferry, I discovered, to my horror, that the hotel wasn’t actually on the Isle Of Wight but on the mainland. So I was homeless on the island’s busiest weekend of the year.
My calls went through to an Indian call centre. They were unhelpful, unsympathetic and unapologetic. I had to go through a hideously laborious process to get a refund. I suppose I did get a call from someone who said they were very sorry, but to this day I haven’t had the 100 ‘Hotels.com dollars’ that person promised back in July “to help make up for our mistake that ruined your weekend”. They’re now on the shit-list along with TalkTalk and HSBC.
Right, I’ve got to call a few more companies now and go through the hoops you have to jump through when you plan a move. Some I’m actually looking forward to. Southern Electric and Southern Gas almost always have what sound like lovely old ladies on the other end of the line. They sound like they are surrounded by pots of tea, Battenberg cake and sandwiches with the edges cut off, when they talk to you. T-Mobile almost always put me through to a Geordie, and I love that, there’s something about Geordies that’s instantly affable and funny.
Islington Council, on the other hand, is like Russian roulette. I could get somebody very able and professional, or I could get someone for whom education was such a low priority that they struggle even to pronounce a simple three letter word like ‘ask’.
Sigh… here we go… The word ‘dial’ is, phonetically, very close to the word ‘die’, isn’t it? Hmmmmm. Deep breath, time to dial…
X eddy
Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.
