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Surrounded by fools…

Sometimes I struggle to find the words to describe the incompetence that seems to permeate the customer service industry in this country. After last week’s unpaid rent debacle, when it turned out that our landlord didn’t really want any money off us after all, HSBC took it upon themselves to set up a second standing order to the landlord on a random date (today) and give them some extra money. 20 minutes of shouting at the customer service representative later, they agreed to reverse the payment. Hopefully, that is. We’ll see if it comes back tomorrow.

I should be thankful–at least this time I was talking to someone who could speak English fluently. Last week, on the other hand, I had to struggle to communicate with one of their staff who was quite obviously at a call centre in India. Now I don’t have any problem with the principle of outsourcing this sort of thing, as long as your customers don’t notice the difference, but if you have to repeat everything you say to the person on the other end of the phone very carefully (and only notice that he’s put the wrong payment amount in because you happen to have your Internet banking client open in front of you, as I did) then that’s not exactly a seamless switch, is it? If anybody ever tries to tell you that the customer won’t even know that they’re speaking to someone on the other side of the world, then they’re quiet evidently talking complete rubbish (although I suppose you could argue that the service is just as poor regardless of which call centre you get).

Much as I love the new flat, it does rather seem like everything has been unnecessarily complicated–from getting a phone installed, to getting the landlord to do simple things like furnish the flat and fix the vent so that the smell of smoke from the downstairs flat doesn’t waft into ours every time they light up.

Is it just me? Why does everything have to be so much more trouble than it needs to be?

1 thought on “”

  1. You’re joking!!! And after you had specifically asked them if this could happen (I heard you).

    Bastards.

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