It’s robot or India - take your pick

I’m just about fed up with trying to contact any form of large company. Banks are the worst offenders in this case - most noteably, Lloyds TSB.

To start with, you get the automated system that makes you talk at it and type in 4.2 billion sets of numbers, account details, shoe size etc etc etc. Once you have done that, 9.999 trillion times out of 10 trillion, it will not recognise the information you entered and boot you out of the system and into some other automated service which will present you with 496 options and sub-options whereby each one links you back into the automated system you have just been ejected from.

If you are lucky (or unlucky, in this case) enough to get through to speak to a real person, then you will have found that your call has been beamed half way round the world to some call centre where they have only just learnt how to speak English and speak in that now increasingly familiar monotone that sounds like the ruddy automated service you just came from - and they are always overly pleasant. Don’t get me wrong, I like pleasant people but over-pleasantness is too much.

My latest experience beggars belief……….

My partner lost her job earlier this year so we ran into difficulty paying the credit card bill. The account got passed to collections and it turns out that collections is actually another name for the Delhi Harrasment Squad. I appreciate I have to pay bills on time, but I contacted the bank, explained the situation and said that the full bill can be settled in a matter of weeks once my partner starts her new job and gets paid. Happy days. I then start getting what only can be described as harrassed, by some overly polite monotonous chap who’s only English words in his vocabulary were “token” and “payement”. Pretty much every day this chump would call my land line (as I barred the number on my mobile) at exactly the same time in the evening and insist I make a “token payment”. After explaining the situation to him 376 times and being completely ignored I started to get quite cross.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, when time came to settle the debt (the same date as I agreed with the bank initially may I add), I rang up and offered my debit card details so the payment could be processed. Low and behold, monotonous “token payment” man proceeded to tell me that he could not accept my card as form of payment for one completely idiotic reason or another. He spends weeks blatantly harrassing me, then as soon as I phone up to pay my debt of my own accord he says I can’t pay it! It really does beggar belief.