“Your call is important to us!” I’m not usually a hothead, but that pisses me off, says RACHEL RICKARD STRAUS
I’m usually not such a hothead. But there is one trigger that sends me into a red-hot rage.
All you have to do is hear a recorded message saying ‘your call is important to us’ – after waiting on the phone for ages to speak to customer service.
Hearing that banal phrase makes me so angry that I want to roar like a wounded lion.
It’s outrageous how easily a company wastes a customer’s time by not answering the phone.
You can’t be serious!: Does Virgin play the same songs on repeat as a clever trick to appease its customers?
Polite recorded messages and apologies only fuel the fire. ‘Your call is important to us’? Then bloom good answer!
You cannot say that you are experiencing “unusually high call volumes” if the call volumes have been high for months.
Then there’s the crackling hold music. Put me in a boxing ring after half an hour of Virgin Media’s looped hold music and I’d knock out a heavyweight champion.
I wonder if Virgin is repeating the same numbers as a clever trick to appease its customers.
I recently called Virgin Media about my escalating broadband bills. The music on hold was intermittently interrupted by a recorded message saying that if I just pressed ‘three’ on my phone’s keypad I could get there and then £1.50 a month off my bills.
It was so tempting. By just pressing ‘three’ I could cut my bills, hang up and not have to listen to Ed Sheeran crowing for the fourth time.
But I held out until I finally reached a human, and was rewarded for my perseverance as I got more than £1.50 off my broadband bills several times over.
Virgin Media would have saved a decent amount of money if I had given in and accepted the first offer.
But if you think I’m mad at companies that put customers on hold, it has nothing to do with how I feel about those who ask customers to call or – worse – don’t even give a phone number.
As our reader’s champion Tony Hetherington describes on page 128, even the IRS uses 0300 numbers, which cost up to 10 cents per minute from a landline and up to 40 cents per minute from a cell phone, unless you have a phone plan that gives you free minutes; being left on hold is bad enough, you will be charged for that.
Applying online for a GHIC, a free card that gives British holidaymakers free medical treatment, is quite simple. You go to nhs.uk/ghic and fill out a form. But if you are not online or need help with your application, it is not so easy.
Call the listed helpline and you will be greeted by a recorded message telling you that ‘it is not possible to request a GHIC over the phone’ and advising you to visit the website.
The recorded message goes on to say that if you were unable to complete the online form and need help, you should email them. Then the line goes dead.
How dare they allow callers to be charged up to 55 cents per minute for listening to a recorded message telling them to hang up and send an email.
But that’s not my main concern.
My real concern is that people who don’t feel comfortable doing things online are gradually being evicted from the rest of society because they are not given offline alternatives.
It is not fair that people who are not online are effectively excluded from free medical treatment in Europe.
The problem is becoming more and more common.
When you’re not online, it becomes increasingly difficult to catch a train or plane, pay for parking, make a booking or make an appointment. That’s not fair.
It makes my blood boil. I’d also like to hear about your customer service experience. You can contact me at [email protected].
Or send me a letter: Rachel Rickard Straus of Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS.