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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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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.)
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