Coming back from the Stone Age that was life in Brazil has made me appreciate life in the UK a thousand times more. As we settle back into the London flat, the ability to order things online and have them delivered to the door - up four flights of stairs, thank you Amazon, Tesco et al - has been wondrous to behold. I am reborn as an online evangelist.
But with higher standards come higher expectations. I've experienced several examples recently of misinformation and confusion from companies and organizations. That is bad enough but what really grates is when you are misinformed with zeal, when the person fervently or dogmatically or didactically insists upon the rightness and trueness of his words and the wrongness of anything that contradicts them. When that happens and s/he is subsequently proved wrong, it is doubly annoying.
Example one: several people at the IPS (Identity and Passport Service) assured me by phone that my son would qualify for a British passport. I applied, including a very full, full-disclosure letter. A week later I received said passport. Celebrations all round. Not long after, following an over-zealous inquiry to the IPS from my local MP, double-checking that the passport had been correctly issued, I was informed that it had not been correctly issued and must now be rescinded. Depression all round. Two phone chats with the head of the IPS resulted in his assuring me that his staff would, in future, be better informed. Great, so glad to be the crash-test dummy in your learning curve ! Considerable hassle later and my son now has a certificate of British citizenship, which is one-up on a passport, so we're smiling again - and bracing for another tedious passport application, albeit without worries this time.
Example two: Trying to switch from TalkTalk to O2 for phone and broadband. More than one person at the latter assured me that TalkTalk must - legally - issue me with a MAC number, and if they did not then I could go to Ofcom forthwith. On this misinformation, I got heavy with TalkTalk. But then someone else at O2 finally agreed that I did not need a MAC number in order to leave. I was also told by O2 that I qualified for a discount on my bill. Subsequently this information was shown to be suspect too. When starting a new customer relationship this doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
Example three: Switching foreign currency bank accounts from Nationwide to Lloyds I was assured by the latter that I would not have to receive a constant stream of unwanted paper statements - something which irked me no end with Nationwide. But on opening the Lloyds accounts the paper statements began to arrive. Call up, speak to someone who says "You can switch them off by logging into your account and clicking X button". That turned out to be wrong, plain and simple. Speak to someone else who says, "No, you can't switch paper statements off for these accounts." Make a fuss, am transferred to the guy who opened the accounts for me and who reassured me multiple times that I could go paperless. He checks again and, to my pleasant surprise, comes back and says he has got them to make a personal request to switch off the paper. So hopefully a happy ending to that little saga.
As I said, it's all relative. Being back in the UK is living like a king, so much price, product, service and convenience choice compared to the nightmare of Brazil. But this problem of misinformation is one of the biggest challenges in our information society. There's so much more that frontline staff need to know about these days and yet there is far too much shoddy middle and senior management at companies who are not investing in the right level of training.
But with higher standards come higher expectations. I've experienced several examples recently of misinformation and confusion from companies and organizations. That is bad enough but what really grates is when you are misinformed with zeal, when the person fervently or dogmatically or didactically insists upon the rightness and trueness of his words and the wrongness of anything that contradicts them. When that happens and s/he is subsequently proved wrong, it is doubly annoying.
Example one: several people at the IPS (Identity and Passport Service) assured me by phone that my son would qualify for a British passport. I applied, including a very full, full-disclosure letter. A week later I received said passport. Celebrations all round. Not long after, following an over-zealous inquiry to the IPS from my local MP, double-checking that the passport had been correctly issued, I was informed that it had not been correctly issued and must now be rescinded. Depression all round. Two phone chats with the head of the IPS resulted in his assuring me that his staff would, in future, be better informed. Great, so glad to be the crash-test dummy in your learning curve ! Considerable hassle later and my son now has a certificate of British citizenship, which is one-up on a passport, so we're smiling again - and bracing for another tedious passport application, albeit without worries this time.
Example two: Trying to switch from TalkTalk to O2 for phone and broadband. More than one person at the latter assured me that TalkTalk must - legally - issue me with a MAC number, and if they did not then I could go to Ofcom forthwith. On this misinformation, I got heavy with TalkTalk. But then someone else at O2 finally agreed that I did not need a MAC number in order to leave. I was also told by O2 that I qualified for a discount on my bill. Subsequently this information was shown to be suspect too. When starting a new customer relationship this doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
Example three: Switching foreign currency bank accounts from Nationwide to Lloyds I was assured by the latter that I would not have to receive a constant stream of unwanted paper statements - something which irked me no end with Nationwide. But on opening the Lloyds accounts the paper statements began to arrive. Call up, speak to someone who says "You can switch them off by logging into your account and clicking X button". That turned out to be wrong, plain and simple. Speak to someone else who says, "No, you can't switch paper statements off for these accounts." Make a fuss, am transferred to the guy who opened the accounts for me and who reassured me multiple times that I could go paperless. He checks again and, to my pleasant surprise, comes back and says he has got them to make a personal request to switch off the paper. So hopefully a happy ending to that little saga.
As I said, it's all relative. Being back in the UK is living like a king, so much price, product, service and convenience choice compared to the nightmare of Brazil. But this problem of misinformation is one of the biggest challenges in our information society. There's so much more that frontline staff need to know about these days and yet there is far too much shoddy middle and senior management at companies who are not investing in the right level of training.
Wonderfully post. After seeing friends on Facebook complaining about delivery systems in Brazil from big retail shops and how shamefull their call centers are, have no doubts that here is a real paradise. Priscila Oliveira
ReplyDeleteJust noticed that O2's parent company is ... Telefonica !! That might explain why they are *still* trying to charge me more than they had agreed. Like father, like son ...
ReplyDelete