KEY POINTS:
I like dishing out a good bollocking, don't you? It's invigorating. Like a wasabi rush or a near miss at 100km/h. Clears out the old adrenaline pipes, stops one getting too feathery.
I just moved house, a complex logistic project which you might think would provide super opportunities for the sport of julienne-ing incompetents. But this time something was different.
Yes, Telecom failed to do practically everything it had agreed to do: connecting phone lines and broadband. Yes, my "account manager" James then told me it would take days to get broadband connected, despite the fact I had arranged the move weeks earlier. Yes, then "team member" Craig told me Telecom had connected broadband and there was something technically retarded with me for not being able to operate it. Yes, then "team leader" Chris admitted she did not know who Kafka was and warned me not to use that language with her staff. Yes, then "queue operator" Brittany admitted it had connected the broadband to a line which was not connected to the house.
And so on. Yes, Farmers failed to deliver the appliances it had promised and Laurene chuckled as she explained the date had been written down wrong and giggled good-naturedly when I pointed out I had Derek the chippie, Gareth the plumber and Rick the sparkie waiting to connect them. Yes, Chris from Crown Removals tried to wriggle out of doing the grisly unpacking and suggested instead of putting books in bookshelves, it was their policy to put them on the floor.
Plenty of good material there for unleashing my inner Cruella de Vil on humble call centre operators and frontline staff in cheap acrylic suits who are not paid enough to know who Kafka is.
But what has changed is that companies have adopted a new approach - pass the parcel - to dealing with customer service. It means there is little point in me using verbal pyrotechnics to win an argument. Because most likely I am not talking to an employee of the company anyway and the service I am complaining about is not provided by the company either. It's pure genius.
Telecom said the balls-up was not their problem as it was a field force contractor, Downers or Transfield, who did the work.
Farmers said the balls-up was not their problem as it was a delivery contractor, Fisher & Paykel, who did the work.
Crown Removals said the balls-up was not their problem as it was an unpacking contractor, Finishing Touch, who did the work (I can see a children's book in this story). My elegantly argued point that I had a deal with the main company to provide a service, not their subcontractors, did not seem to cut much ice.
This was not really surprising as Brittany, Craig and Chris were probably not Telecom employees either (Telecom's call centres are run by international companies Sitel and Teltech). It really takes the fun out of screaming down the phone. It's like arguing about how your husband drops his toenail clippings on the floor - with his cousin.
I once did a negotiation course. I don't remember much but what did stick was that there is no point wasting time talking to people who don't have the responsibility to close the deal. That's the beauty of this outsourcing malarkey - no one is responsible.
And that is something I could really get on the phone and bollock Paul Reynolds about.
