talkmagic.co.uk

7. People who phone up call centres and describe car crashes that are most definitely one hundred per cent their fault and append it with "but it was his fault". And then give some poor excuse as to why this is the case.

"I ran into the back of him whilst he was stationary but it was his fault. He stopped suddenly."

"I ran into a parked vehicle but it was his fault. He shouldn't have parked there"

"Well I fell asleep at the wheel and veered into an oncoming car but it was his fault. He should have honked me or something" (<------- As disgusting as it sounds this is 100% genuine and is what some crackhead said to me tonight before admitting that he had fallen asleep at the wheel and caused an accident before - again it was the other mans fault because he didn't honk.)

8. People who phone call centres and say "I know I have the wrong department but the right one is really busy". So you'e perfectly aware that the Claims department is for reporting claims but you want me to add a named driver onto your policy with some sense of urgency because you forgot to do it when you should have done and now can't be bothered to wait in a queue to get it sorted?

9. People who write abusive letters to call centres.

Recently I've started dealing with the complaint letters and a complaint letter I had today ended with (this is sanitized quite substantially):

"I hope your company goes bust, all your employees have to get unemployment benefit and your directors are never employed again. You are a sham. You're a bunch of thieving, lying, deceitful, dishonest, disgraceful C U Next Tuesays.

Sincerely *some idiot*"

10. Working in a call centre not knowing if I'm getting that managers job or not!

If I am permitted to continue with the callcenter list (I have worked in one for over 4 and a half years, I think I count)

11. People wanting to speak to the manager/supervisor, when most of the time that manager can't do anything further, and knows less about the system than the original CSR (Customer service rep).
Callers (Synonymous with "Morons") almost always get shirty with the CSR but when the all-powerful manager comes on the line, they become calmer and a heckovalot more polite than they have been, all because of a change of voice. (I know this to be true by putting the caller on hold for 30 seconds then returning to the line with a calm and lighter voice with a mild bad Scottish accent. And it works.)

12. People calling wanting more in an attempt to game the system.
Example: I work in a callcenter dealing primarily with a well known mobile phone service. Some specific callers know that we can add credit to prepay mobiles if we have a good reason to. Cue people saying they are stuck in the middle of nowhere, unable to call home, just to get enough to text a friend about something that happened in school.
One time a child said in a sad and crying voice that they wanted credit to call their mother in hospital, as their mother had cancer. I said I wouldn't. She asked (as unhappy and sad as possible) why not. I said that aside from defeating the point of a prepay phone service, I also didn't believe her, as I could hear an older lady in the background coaching her on what to say and to sound more upset. A supervisor listened to the call afterwards and said I made the right decision, as she had called up a few times afterwards with different stories each time, and that her phone was going to be bricked.

13. Callers that, on hearing your name, even asking for it specifically, instantly forget it. My name is Malcolm. In the last 3 months only 2 callers have said my name back at me correctly. Everyone else says Mark, Michael, Mike, Nathan, Morton, David, Charles, Graham, etc. I have even answered the phone to the name "Macho Man Randy Savage", and people didn't notice that.

14. Racist callers.
Ignoring the anti-welsh people (It doesn't happen often, and my defence is usually "At least I'm not from..." whatever city/town is on their address on screen), it's amazing the numbers of people whom call up and think I'm in India or somewhere similar. The amount of racial abuse is staggering (and correlates with the numbers of bricked phones, surprisingly), despite the fact that I say my name and my accent is best described as BBC 1 Continuity Announcer From The Home Counties.
Example:
Caller - "I live in Scarborough. Here, we spell it S C A R B O R O U G H..."
Me - "We spell it that way too"
Caller - "Where are you, Bangalore?"
Me - "No, Swansea."
(What follows is a good few seconds where I wait for the penny to drop about how insulting what she said was).

15. Callers with babies.
I know you're a busy person looking after a baby (or multiples of them), but I don't really want to hear them screaming. If I hear them screaming, I'm imaging how much of a bad parent you are. I imagine you to be on the waiting list for the Jeremy Kyle Show. And please, put the baby down when you're trying to read out a credit card number. It's hard enough to hear you when you're distracted with nappy changing, I don't want to try and hear you over the sound of a screaming baby that you put RIGHT NEXT TO THE GODDAMNED MICROPHONE!!! You make me never want to have kids in the future, you don't deserve to have a mobile phone and you know you will be buying a new one because your child will chew it or pick it up or drop it or something stupid because you let it...

Speaking of which...

16. Phone owners whom let their children play with the phone.
It is NOT CUTE at ALL. Especially when they get through to me, mumbling rubbish, so I class it as an abusive call, send a warning text and brick the handset. This doesn't just apply to babies. This also applies to kids playing with the phone when their parents are out, and they decide to waste time by calling a number and saying rude words down the phone. It's satisfying when they say that I can't bar their handset, and when I say I am doing it now, they start pleading apologies, only to be cut midway because it's been bricked...

(And... relax...)

Agreed!

17. People who phone call centres and get angry that you can't access their card details to pay for their change of *whatever* and have to expend all that effort to remove their wallet from their pocket because of our "useless inefficient system". What's that sir? Want me to have free and easy access to your credit card number because you're too damned lazy to get your card out again?

Ultimately though guys, for all your understandable gripes: you get paid to be on the other end of that phone Some - not all, granted - of the people on the other end of the phone have already spent a long day at work. It's supposed to be their time off to play with the kids, have a glass of wine and forget about anything "official" but because they have a simple query about their insurance policy or mobile contract, they have to spend what feels like years on the phone listening to "in order to direct you to the right person, choose from the following options: for membership enquiries, press 1, for sales enquiries, press 2..." knowing full well they need "...and for all other issues, press 9."

I feel i must make an anti call centre list lol... Please note this is not aimed to start a war.. just to add some fun banter to the mix.. so please do not take offence.... like everything in life there are good and poor in every industry ...

1) The people who phone (from a call centre) and ask you to confirm your details for "security purposes"... Hold you - you phoned me... so you know who I am, and my telephone number and you want me to give you the rest??... hmmmm no i thinks.... send me a letter ! lol...
Incidentally, i tried to (on a rather mischievous day) get the call centre to tell me my password before i would divulge any details to them... I mean ... we have to for them, so why dont they??? after all data protection act ... lol..

Anyone else...

Oh and Mr Echo..... as for the kids... if we waited till they stopped crying some days we would never and i mean never get to make that call..... lol...

F x

FairieSnuff wrote:Oh and Mr Echo..... as for the kids... if we waited till they stopped crying some days we would never and i mean never get to make that call..... lol..

Actually, that one was me...
But I have a legitimate reason for the crying baby one. Namely that I'm wearing a headset to do my job, and I don't want 3 minutes of high pitched, high volume screaming fed directly into my ears.

As for outbound sales/courtesy calls, I have nothing to do with those, as I believe them to be the worst kind of callcenter job...

Crikey, I'm glad I don't work in a call centre.

Here's yet another thing that grates me (I'm a miserable git, I know). When someone calls my phone, has obviously got a wrong number, and demands to know who I am. Er, you called me, pal. Who do you think it is? And why don't you just tell me who you want to speak to, anyway? Idiot.

Farlsborough wrote:

Replicant wrote:To be fair, the English aren't exactly known for their friendliness, either. Especially southerners.

So I thought... I'm proud to be a Yorkshireman but I have to say, I zoomed down to central London and back today and was very pleasantly surprised. I had to ask 4 people (including a motorcycle courier pulled up at some lights) for directions, and they were all extremely friendly. The folk I'd gone down to do business with were lovely too. So maybe we're a bit harsh on the ol' Southerners...?

Though I still maintain that Southend is the rear end of our planet.

OI.....i mean this in the most polite southern way possible FEK OFF...

We've had an old lady phoning our house for six days now (often several times on the same day) asking if I'm a gardener. When I tell her that no I'm not, she gets all shirty and says "well someone gave me your number and told me you were a gardner". She won't go away. She's driving me mad. I even looked up a gardner in Yellow Pages for her this morning and gave her the number. Will it do any good? Will she leave me alone? Time will tell.

Do BT do a number block thing whereby I can block her number? I've 1471'd her and have her number.

This is my current gripe.

themagicwand wrote:
Do BT do a number block thing whereby I can block her number? I've 1471'd her and have her number.

You can put in a complaint with us, but im not entirely sure what the procedure would be in regards to blocking her

Paul, next time she calls you, ask her what she wants done and take her address. Then call that gardener you mentioned and tell him you want some work done in your garden. Give him her address. Happy gardener, happy old lady, happy Paul.

Sorted.

Replicant wrote:Paul, next time she calls you, ask her what she wants done and take her address. Then call that gardener you mentioned and tell him you want some work done in your garden. Give him her address. Happy gardener, happy old lady, happy Paul.

Sorted.

I can see that going horribly, horribly wrong. I'd probably end up with a gardening bill to pay, an old lady reporting me for harassment, and BT cutting off my phone line on account of me making nuisance phone calls.

An advert that really grinds my gears today is the one where the guy is making his lawful way along a road in a 30 zone when a car, obscured by school kids, suddenly backs out on him. It's a little shunt. Nothing more.

But in the advert, he smashes his face into the steering wheel despite wearing his seat belt in the most unrealistic reconstruction EVER. And if "they" re-sited the bus stop on the other side of the road in response to this "accident", the school kids would be getting on the wrong bus in the mornings!

As lies go, this fabrication has more holes than a sting vest.

Grrr...

Clearly Tomo, they only put that line in at the end to stop people accusing them of being money-grabbing gits. "I got thousands of pounds compensation... but more importantly, they did something about that bus stop!"

Yeah right mate. That's more important to you than the thousand pounds you're going to go and spend on a plasma screen for you to watch during all that sick leave you're taking off for a mild muscular strain

themagicwand wrote:Do BT do a number block thing whereby I can block her number? I've 1471'd her and have her number.

Ok granted this is in the USA however the phone company wouldn't be able to help you... you need to call the cops and report her for harassment which is exactly what she is doing actually is.

I've resisted using what little of English vernacular here but telly and bobby are both prominently in my head