An Indian, an Irishman and an Aussie Chick...

Sounds like the start of one of those terrible and predictable jokes doesn't it. It's not. I spoke to each of these while sitting on the phone to a company which will remain nameless. Now I'm going to rant, settle yourself in or go somewhere else before I start...

All of our consultants are taking other calls at present.

Which loosely translates to: Your account is worth diddly squat to us so we'll stuff you around as long as you'll let us.

Please hold and we will assist you as soon as possible.

Which translates to: If you're stupid enough to expect customer service from a customer service call centre you can damn well wait for one of our other idiots to take your call, when they have finished their smoke and their coffee and feel like doing some actual work.

I called this nameless company this morning and used an automated service, which apparently gets cleared every 30min, in an attempt to avoid the hassle of speaking to one of the company's drones. Three hours later my request still hadn't been actioned..

So I called and I pressed 3, and then 2 and then 5 and was greeted with the above message. In between the monotony of the message I was played the musical tunes of Dido. Ordinarily Dido wouldn't bother me, but coincidently I had spent the 2hours prior listening to the same CD. I'd heard enough for the day.

My call is answered first by the Indian guy. Between the broken english I soon discovered that he couldn't actually help me as he didn't have a computer in front of him and was only taking details so that someone could "call back sometime in the next 24hrs".

I was in a mood and wanted to speak to someone who could help, NOW.

So I was put back in the "queue" and the message began to replay, this time over the top of the theme from The X Files. It seemed more appropriate music to me. The next person to take my call was the Aussie chick. Without saying hello she asked for my account number and name, which I gave. She then begins to tell me that she'll have someone call me back. By this stage I was on my third smoke and in a mood worse than any "out there" creature from the X Files and more determined in my search for "the truth" than even Fox "Spooky" Mulder on a bad day. So after a few minutes of abuse and questions unanswered I was put back in the queue to wait for someone who DID have a computer and may (or may not) be capable of customer service.

This time I was greeted by the mellow sounds of "Enya". The steam coming from my ears began to twirl and drift into rythmic waves in time with the soft melodic music. My anger however didn't subside. By this stage I had been on the phone for over half an hour, but my stubborn streak would not allow me to hang up without speaking to someone and getting what I wanted.

The next human voice I heard was that of a young Irishman. I cut him off mid-sentence to ask if he was in fact in front of a computer. Surprise, surprise he was not. So I went back into the queue and lit another smoke.

My call was eventually taken by a tired and weary sounding woman. She was in front of a computer and did have access to my account details. "Hallelujah" I saved the hysterical laughter for after I got off the phone, through fear that I would completely freak this woman out and have her hang up on me, I didn't want to do this all again. Thirty seconds later she had done what I requested and was asking if there was anything else she could help me with....

I went through all of this because they had a "large volume" of calls coming in. It was a total of 90!! For a company this size I would have thought that was a slow part of the day! Now I'm just hoping they don't fuck up again.

I feel much better now that I've vented though!

If you've read all of this I pity you :-P