simont | A particularly unimpressive telephone-answering service

A particularly unimpressive telephone-answering service

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.

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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...

What do you not have a tag for?

Anything longer than n0 characters? Obviously I make new tags as appropriate, but I was implying -- as humour, not truth -- that "phone menu" had equal status with "life" and "meme" :)

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.

According to

ghoti, the council have a government-imposed choice between moving to bi-weekly black bin collection and being fined (but not being allowed to raise council taxes to pay for the fine).

There aren't any neighbours who could be persuaded to share a black & green bin between you are there?

Have you seen Gwydir St? Anyway, I'm one of the lucky ones - I have space for two bins - without having to haul them through my house. But, anyway, the council has decided not to give green bins to us, as most people don't have space for the black bin. Like I said, 70% of them already live on the pavement every day.

Sorry, I was being stupid. But still, a black bin and a green bin between two would be better than two black bins, if rubbish is about half and half.

(Have you tried asking the council for one, if *you* have room?)

No, because I don't need one. I produce very little waste myself, and very little of that is compostable (I have a large bin as I have a two-bed house, but only me living here).

I'm more concerned about what's going to happen to the bins of those larger households in the area who currently fill a bin a week. Are we going to have two weeks worth of garbage overspilling full black bins onto the pavements?

Ah, ok.

Are we going to have two weeks worth of garbage overspilling full black bins onto the pavements?

Fortunately, the council faq addresses this:

(a) You may pay for a special, extra, collection
(b) You may take it to a landfill
(c) You may pay for an extra black bin if you have the space
(d) Rubbish not inside a bin with the lid fully closed will not be collected.

OK, I'll stop being sarcastic at them now. No, I have no idea, I hope there is some solution!

The website hints at a smaller bag equivalent of the green bin, but I couldn't find any other info.

I was disturbed to see they charge for extra/replacement bins/boxes; though I thought people had had them gratuitously delivered when not there.

bag equivalent of the green bin

Yes, that's right; you can get brown paper bags.

How odd that they can pick up brown paper bags, but not black plastic ones...

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

Probably worth mentioning it on cam.misc.

:/

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.

Yes, I phoned 458282. (Was that the right place to go, then? I assumed they'd either be able to send me a black box or tell me who I should be asking, but it wasn't clear which.) I don't know whether my somewhat confused message will manage to turn into an intelligible jobcard; it might perfectly well be my own fault if it doesn't.

And are you going to complain to them about getting a stupid recording when it was wholly unnecessary?

Yes, that was the right place :/ The Helpdesk is in the same room that the Rangers are based in :p

FWIW phoning between 9 and 3:30ish will leave you most likely to get through to A Real Person, I think (8-9 has everyone faffing around and dealing with logs etc, and for the last half-hour much the same is true). So... hopefully, your message will get turned into a jobcard early tomorrow morning, and hopefully it'll get passed on to someone who'll deal with it in the next week or so.

*sigh* Well... I know it's not much comfort from your position, but I've witnessed at least two 30-minute turnarounds on such orders: they phoned just as we were dropping by the office (for a cup of tea. Um.), so we dealt with them almost straight away.

They *can* be efficient. Really.

(Argh. Far too many smilies.)

Fair enough; I tried at 5ish, so I could certainly try earlier if nothing's happened in a few days. Thanks :-)

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...

You could try to sell it *back* to them :)

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

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.

I got a shiny new blue box

VWOORP VWOORP VWOORP

The next day I got an almost identical leaflet through the door, except this one has different days on it.

I have none, I will have the spare one. Except not, because in this universe, in contrast to most well organised ones with magic in such as JS&MrN and Archer's Goon, writing something down doesn't make it happen like that.

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A particularly unimpressive telephone-answering service

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