The voice of the voices in my head: 01/30/2005

I've had it with call centres and crappy service today. I just hung up talking to the third call centre today and I have had enough.

Call Centre 1
I woke up this morning expecting to once again experience broadband internet, that telstra like to take away from me every month after i download 30 or 40 gigs... fair enough... its my plan. It wasn't to be however, my internet was still capped. I did the usual things they suggested... i restarted the modem... i restarted the linux box that shares the internet... but still no avail.

Well I decided to give telstra a call. After putting in about 20 keypresses to siply let them know I have cable, after ringing a number for cable customers, I am put on hold. "Higher then normal call volume." Fair enough... its 9am on a Tuesday morning, I'm sure every operator they have is almost collapsing from the torrents of calls they must have at this peak hour. Minutes pass, I think. You see telstra miss one small thing on their call waiting system. Music. I sat their for 10 minutes with the phone to my ear listening to very light static. Occasionally a female voice would interupt me to remind me just how damn busy they were at 0900 hours, but apart from that I was dealing with the silence.

Eventually I got my call answered, an Australian voice answered. I couldn't believe it. An aussie voice answering a tech support question from an australian company in australian to an australian customer. I must say this guy was very helpful, and my kudos to telstra for the actualy tech support given, minus the wait.

Call Centre 2

About an hour ago I the phone rang and I picked it up. Light static i nthe background, an assortment of clicks, and straight away I knew it was some person ringing over some crappy third rate line to sell me their latest insurance plan. I WAS WRONG! It was a holiday. The indian man (go figure, why have aussies call aussies?) introduced himself from this holiday country. I told him I wasn't at all interested and yet he decided to keep going. "but did you know?!" I'm sure you all know the type. I have a bit of respect for people in these types of jobs, they are only trying to feed their families, and probably get alot of people abusing them thoughtout the day. But it shits me when they don't take no for an answer.

So he started telling me all about his companies plan. At the end of every paragraph I said "really?" That single work kept him going for another 5 minutes and and 12 "really's". Sif talk over me. Upon my last really I put the phone down on my desk and waited about 3 or 4 minutes. He was still on the end, saying things along the line of "Hello?" and "Are you there?". "I am" I replied, but can you explain to me exactly how it works. He did. "Really?" I replied as I hung up the phone.

Call Centre 3

When I bought my new mobile with 3 one of the things that annoyed me was despite the fact the actual phone should be able to connect to the internet, and it could if it was on a plan, I couldnt since i decided to buy it outright and go on prepaid. The number was hard enough to find on the official three website. When I found the only number I could it asked me to ring another number. I rang that number and there was no queue. Unfortunatly while my callwas answered there was no operator. In the background I could hear people talking and someone whistling. Good Job Three. I called back, my fingers by this stage of the day were getting raw from hitting so many phone buttons, which themselves were starting to have the numbers and letters worn off them. This time I had a nice indian man answer. Nice in the fact that someone answered. Indian in the fact I doubted he was in Australia, or he had ever visited the country.

I asked him if I could get internet on my prepaid mobile. He said I sure could and put me on hold. He returned a few minutes later to tell me I couldnt. So I asked if there was any posisbility I could switch to a plan, I orignally didnt go a plan because I don't like the length. My phones don't even last a year, let alone 2. I couldn't. He suggested I could get a second phone on a plan. This is where this guy went down hill. All he wanted to try and do then was sell me a second phone, something I definetly did not want. Its all he wanted

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I just made the toughest descion in my daily life at the moment. What to have for lunch? On the one of two days during the week at the moment when I do absolutly nothing, this is one of the biggest choices I have to make. I mean there is others, whether I should watch a movie or tv... whether its worth the effort to go the toilet... whether I should bother cleaning up my flat... hmmm... i should prbably do the last one. University should be good insofar that it will give me something to do.

My uni timetable isn't too bad. Its not great, but it could be worse. Its tricky because I am based on two campuses so I have to allow travelling time between the two. At the moment I get Thursday off and I only have 15 contact hours I think.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Skiing

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Rant Time: Call Centres