A particularly unimpressive telephone-answering service

[simont]

I just phoned the city council's rubbish-collection helpline, in the hope of asking them to send me a black recycling box (which I've never had one of, and thought it was about time I did).

The phone promptly started blaring very loudly into my ear, starting half way through a recorded message of somebody telling me to make sure I had my black box. Er, yes, that's what I'm calling about; not a good start. After a minute or so this loud blaring recorded voice was interrupted by a much more bored recorded voice saying ‘your call is important to us’, at which point I realised that the first recorded voice was in fact on-hold music, only (even) less musical.

After five minutes I came off hold and got through to … wait for it … an answering machine. Arrgh! Given that my call was answered by a machine anyway, you'd think it could have taken a message immediately if it was going to, and ought only to have kept me on hold if I needed to speak to a human. Having one machine make me wait me five minutes for the privilege of speaking to another machine is staggeringly bad. I almost didn't manage to leave a message at all, because I was literally speechless with a mixture of umbrage and sheer bewilderment at this mindbogglingly stupid policy.

I did leave my address in the end. Perhaps they'll send me a black box. Perhaps they won't. I don't think I have it in me to try again any time soon.

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I think I have a tag I use specially for ranting about stupid phone systems. OTOH, I know someone who *did* get a black box from them, so it does do something, which frankly is better than I expected. OTOH, there seemed little information telling you that you could do this...

There're useless!

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

I tried phoning them the other day, to ask a question. About the alternate week green/black bin collection. Because (almost) no one round here has a green bin. We barely have space for one black bin, which is why the streets are full of them every day. Which, effectively, means that those of us in terraces in Petersfield are moving to a bi-weekly rubbish collection service.

I gave up in the end.

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

That's not encouraging... just this morning I decided it was time to try to persuade the council to give me a green bin.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Probably worth mentioning it on cam.misc.

[kaberett.livejournal.com]

:/

From what I've *seen*, the people on the Helldesk were mostly helpful, and there weren't phones going off often enough to account for the number of people I see saying that they only got an answering machine.

(To be fair, when I *was* in the office, it was at the beginning and end of the day...)

Once it's been put on a jobcard, it should get done reasonably quickly. The Rangers do delivery, and they seem perfectly competent to me.

I assume you phoned 458282? :/ In which case, I'm going to be confused and defensive... heh.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

Today we received a second blue box for the imminent plastics recycling. Initially, they missed us when delivering the boxes to our road, I suppose because the front door is down a little alleyway which is easily missed. I rang up the recycling helpline, and they said they'd send one in time for the next collection. Since our next recyclable collection was two days later (and I hadn't known that the blue box recycling wasn't even due to start for several weeks, not having received the explanatory leaflet which everyone else got in their blue box), I became concerned when the blue box did not materialise the following day, and rang the helpline to check again. I suppose this explains why we now have two! You can have the spare, if you like - I know it's not black, but I doubt the binmen will mind...

[emperor]

It's really annoying. I suggest you email them instead.

[sonicdrift.livejournal.com]

I got a shiny new blue box with a leaflet telling me what days to put it out. The next day I got an almost identical leaflet through the door, except this one has different days on it. Hmmm, will try putting *everything out* and see what goes.

They did send me a replacement black box when I left my address though.