Hanging on the telephone… a bit of a rant… plus an excuse for an obvious bit of Blondie! #MondayBlogs

Image by Alexander Lesnitsky from Pixabay

I’m typing this as my phone, on speaker mode, launches, once more, into the interminable series of, what I can only describe as, musac. So far this has only been on repeat for an hour today. Last week, on just one day, I listened to it for a continuous six hours…

The most irritating thing is that if I’d known where I was in the queue then when it got dangerously close to the time I had to go and do something else, and therefore end the call, I could have made a calculated decision. Still 1000^th in line, fair enough, never going to get to the front in time. But what if I’d been 2^nd in line… how infuriating would that have been.

Actually that was not the most irritating thing. The most irritating thing had been the day before when I’d queued (only three hours that time) then (hallelujah) someone had answered and I’d spent a decent length of time changing a mandate for a client. The customer service representative, I’ll call him Matthew, was helpful and knew what he was doing (unlike the bloke the day before who’d cut the call as soon as I’d got through security… suspicious? Yes, I think so) but Matthew even stayed on the line when he emailed me the new mandate forms to check they arrived safely.

I actually felt like I’d achieved something.

Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay

Unfortunately, Matthew had spotted that my clients, a charity, had the wrong sort of accounts set up and before the mandate could be activated I needed to have them changed over into charity accounts. Just give them a call, he said…

That’s where the six hours came in…

I was on such a high with actually having managed to sort out the mandate I decided to tackle the account issue that very same day. What a mistake.

Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay

I did get through to someone. Unfortunately, that someone told me I couldn’t just ‘transfer the accounts over into charity accounts’ I had to set up new accounts instead, and he couldn’t do that, I needed to speak to a different department.

And it was at that point I realised all the good work I’d done with Matthew had been a complete waste of time, because the mandate, he’d so efficiently sent over, would now have all the wrong account numbers in it… I think it might have been at this point I had a little sob…

Image by ElasticComputeFarm from Pixabay

This guy, un-phased by me clearly having some kind of breakdown on the other end of the line (he must be used to it) said he’d put me through to the right department but actually all that happened was I re-joined the queue… and the musac started all over again…

Yes, that was definitely the most irritating thing. All that time wasted in achieving precisely nothing.

Is it any wonder everyone’s mental health is suffering when they’re faced with this kind of crap?

And yes, I know things are really tough right now and that because of Covid-19 the numbers of those manning the customer service desks are right down, believe me I’m all about forbearance, but I’ll say two things to any entity that has one of these queuing systems:

1. Have a numbering system so we know where we are in that damned queue, and can make decisions accordingly.
2. And play some decent music! I can’t believe it is beyond the system’s capabilities not to be able to load up an hour long playlist of upbeat tunes? At least we could have a dance while we wait…

And on that note, I’d definitely include this one…

How about you, have you had any need to call some big company recently? I do hope not, for your sake! And what songs you would want in that playlist?

Image by No-longer-here from Pixabay