You all know the joy of dealing with bureaucracy? When I first took over Stitches, I had the dubious pleasure of talking to lots of automated answering systems, “customer service colleagues” and various other frustrating, time-wasting facilities almost every day in order to get my services and utilities actioned. This was all made even more difficult by having to field the still-new concept of serving unfamiliar customers with sometimes unfamiliar products, with one ear to the “muzak” being channelled in and doing my best to look professional and knowledgeable at the same time. I’m still working on the last bit.
One of the issues I was trying to sort out was the fact that my water bill seemed to include two properties. I guessed this because there were two addresses, two standing charges and two lots of cubic meterage – see? I know the lingo as well. When I rang to query this, needless to say it all got very complicated. The addresses being used on the bills were still the ones listed in Garstang’s Medieval Guide to Tourism, so it wasn’t helping that I was using the current addresses to try and sort it all out.
Trying to describe just how small my little emporium was and to impress on United Utilities that I really didn’t want to be paying for half the High Street proved to be getting us nowhere. Eventually the child young man on the other end of the line asked me how much water I was using per day. “About two flushes and half a kettle,” I said. This seemed to sway him a bit as it obviously wasn’t on his script or his well-thumbed training pack of customer responses.
He went away to find a grown-up who I could talk to and she suggested that they send me a nice map of the street which I could draw on in red pen to define my boundaries and I would then return it to her. I’ve never had to define my boundaries before and it wasn’t easy. I normally leave that sort of thing to Mr PDP who earns his keep admirably in that department.
That seemed to do the trick, although it turns out that my estimation of ‘two flushes and half a kettle’ was rather ambitious. To have the time and luxury of drinking that amount of tea and get to go to the loo twice in one day would be an extravagance indeed when the shop gets really busy. Happily, my bill was eventually adjusted accordingly. My neighbours now get to pay their own bills and mine comes to little more than the standing charge, or should that be a ‘sitting’ charge?
Whilst I’m on the subject, ever tried getting through to a human at BT? It would seem that it is a prerequisite of employees there to be as uncommunicative as possible whilst still hanging on to their post as advisors at a major communications providing company. They are very good at it.
It proved to be actually impossible to make contact with anyone telephone-related in the time gap between customers so I had to resort to phoning from home. This instantly created problems because they always presume you are phoning about the telephone line you are ringing from. Which I wasn’t. After several days, I’d swear they recognised my number and stopped answering my calls. I wasn’t asking for much and I don’t think I was being unreasonable. I just wanted them to stop sending me a quarterly bill as well as a monthly bill. Not too much to ask? Apparently, yes.It took over 12 months and countless phone calls on an 0845 number to sort out my telephone bill. I cancelled my Direct Debit facility, which got their attention funnily enough, and refused to be intimidated by their threatening letters.
I eventually resorted to sending emails directly to one of the bosses, whose name and email address I managed to wangle out of an inexperienced Customer non-Care Services ill-Advisor who didn’t see me coming. After another excessive period of time, the BT boss and I declared a truce and came to an amicable agreement and between us we invented a novel idea.
1. BT would send me correct invoices at the correct intervals.
2. I would pay them.
See? Simples.