Surviving Customer Services (Part 3)

Pipex were prompt. I can’t fault them on that. Email had turned out to be much the same option as Southend pier. They can’t accept queries by email (along with semaphore and deliveries by donkey) and could I log a case via their web page? There was a definite rumbling in the grumble magma, like someone had given Vesuvius indigestion, but this is the internet age, so I do just that, copying and pasting my previous email into their web-form, answering those sixteen pointless questions that are the online equivalent of whatever booby traps that Indiana Jones must face to retrieve the fabulous golden turds of the Aztec hyena, and provide every detail about myself short of my inside leg measurements and a psychological profile. The following day I am rewarded by a response. Can I provide my details so they can locate my account and prove it’s me and not someone else trying to correct my terms of service (if so, where can I find this generous individual and thank them)? Well, of course I can I re-input the information, it’s the same information I had to provide in order to submit the case the day before. They’re making it easy for me, I can copy and paste. I’m a child of the Internet age. I see light at the end of the tunnel, I shall soon be untied and freed from my download limit bondage.

Not yet though, the next message from Pipex says "sorry, you’ll need to contact TalkTalk customer support to discuss this, it’s such privileged information that we’d be executed and our families shipped to Siberia if we so much as even gleaned even the slightest knowledge of your predicament. Please don’t say another word, think of our families!”. Can they forward it, I mean I am a Pipex customer after all? No. That would be tantamount to knowledge that the problem exists and the death squads would be upon them, crashing through the skylights and tasering their first born. Could I stand the guilt of that? Well, if you do ask, I could. OK, OK, rather than build a giant death tractor and drive it through the front doors of their HQ and embarking on an orgy of farm machinery related destruction not bettered since the Tobe Hooper-directed remake of Animal Farm (“piggy’s gonna squeal”), I’ll try once more with the more reasonable route.

The drill is familiar. I copy and paste the complaint into TalkTalk’s web-form, answer the sixteen challenges of doom, add my psychological assessment and click submit. The next day, my inbox pings (it does literally), and “can I provide…" Of course I can, I gibber, feeling the magma start to kick like a volcanic baby. I am the copy-and-paste ninja! So that verify that I am in fact me. And that I’m not a TalkTalk customer. The rumbling grows ominous now. I so want my death tractor.

No worries though, it didn’t really matter as they can’t deal with the query anyway. See, I’m with the wrong kind of customer service, I need the other kind of customer service.  Why don’t I instead call their ‘Customer Retention’ line? I can have them sort out there own problem and I can pay them to do so. See that: their problem, my money, it’s genius. Well, it’s a bargain, I’m sure sex lines and casinos in Monaco are far more expensive ways to amuse yourself.

Except I’ve already written a single paragraph that perfectly and precisely states the issue. It’s a small package of neatly wrapped explanatory perfection. It’s lean, mean and to the point. It would not benefit from being yelled down the phone at some distant village idiot. It’s not debatable or arguable, and I feel no great urge to discuss it (beyond the 2,000 words or so I’ve already written on the subject). So, TalkTalk, rather than me waste more of my time by forcing me to invent a time machine and zap myself back to the beginning, why don’t you just unblock the damn process and pass along my query to your Retentions Team? I mean, you are a telecommunications provider, after all. Telecommunicate!

This cannot be done. TalkTalk have taken the game of outsourcing to an entire new level by locating their customer services team outside the realm of normal time and space. They are apparently tucked away into a cul-de-sac of space-time where normal communications simply cannot work. They have taken the underlying brane of the universe and tightly wrapped their customers services team like an impregnable christmas present designed to delight and then drive the recipient to despair, as they lose their fingernails and are generally reduced to screaming like they’ve found themselves starring in Saw XVIII. From within their fold in the fabric of the universe they can’t email or phone, or otherwise contact the retention team. Even if I attached giant plasmas drives to the death tractor, it couldn’t get inside.

The BT Subscriber's Complaint Resolves Itself

It’s not all bad though. We’re not in a one-sided, abusive relationship here. They’re willing to give a little back. For instance, I get access to thousands of X-Factor tickets. On hearing this, I was stuck with the grim knowledge that all those years ago I may have pressed the wrong button and ordered an unlimited broadband service when, all the time, I had intended to order the tickets to an experience I would anticipate is akin to gouging out my own eyeballs with a rusty ice cream scoop while being fucked in each ear by two horny donkeys on Viagra. We all make mistakes online, and some can’t be undone by deleting your browser cache and immersing your computer in undiluted bleach.

Of course, the aim is to survive. To not be beaten by the system. It’s easy to let the grumble magma erupt, fling fury into the sky. But in land without ready access to a surfeit of firearms, what’s the point. Death tractors probably require expensive modifications. You can’t just tint the windows and hope no one notices. Take a breath, let the magma cool. All is not done.

No, there’s an opportunity here to volley this case back and forth in a childish game of “please pass this on,” “I can’t”, “well, I’m not”, “but we don’t…” and just see how long it takes. It’s day three now. They’ve done the impossible though. I sudden have a rosy recollection of many happy days talking to BT Customer Services. I can’t remember what went wrong between us.