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Oct. 3rd, 2006 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
webofevilI will not allow this journal to become a repository of endless kvetching about my broadband provider, but I just had to commemorate this:
Getting through to TalkTalk is an endless nightmare, more Philip Dick than Kafka, with its cheerful humanesque simulacra feeding you messages of false hope and the pointless button-pushing and then the waiting, God, the waiting... Beware if you get through too soon, though: I’ve found it means the operator you’re speaking to will have even less clue what to do than usual. Recently I [excruciatingly boring detail cut here] on the TalkTalk website, and it didn’t work. Later, when I had eventually got through to a human being in Mumbai or wherever after a half-hour wait, she spent five minutes tapping away and saying “Just a moment”, before she announced the exact same message I had got when I [boring, again]. “Did you just try and do that on the website?” I cried. “I can do that! I just did do that! I thought you had special databases or something in front of you! What the hell’s the point my calling the other side of the world if...”, and so on. She didn’t, it turned out, have a special database in front of her; nothing, in fact, that a trained kitten with an internet connection wouldn't have access to, or indeed a similar strike rate with.
This afternoon, however, in a rare display of wit, they buggered me about in a completely new way. I had reached TalkTalk Nirvana: I had somehow got through to one of their very helpful technical people in Johannesburg. “I’ll sort that out for you,” he said. “I'll get our technical team to call you back.” “Hmm," I said, “they failed to call me back about [boring] before.” “Well, let me take your mobile number too,” he said, so I gave it to him. “Okay, that’s on the computer now,” he said, as my mobile began to ring (I ignored it; I knew I’d only be about a minute more), “so someone from the team should be ringing you some time in the next three days.” The mobile quit ringing. We said goodbye, I hung up, I picked up my mobile, I checked its voicemail, and “this is Graham from TalkTalk’s technical team. This is the first of two callbacks. We will be calling you again within the next 48 hours”. On this occasion they were far too efficient—they had rung me back before I had even got off the phone from the first guy.
Getting through to TalkTalk is an endless nightmare, more Philip Dick than Kafka, with its cheerful humanesque simulacra feeding you messages of false hope and the pointless button-pushing and then the waiting, God, the waiting... Beware if you get through too soon, though: I’ve found it means the operator you’re speaking to will have even less clue what to do than usual. Recently I [excruciatingly boring detail cut here] on the TalkTalk website, and it didn’t work. Later, when I had eventually got through to a human being in Mumbai or wherever after a half-hour wait, she spent five minutes tapping away and saying “Just a moment”, before she announced the exact same message I had got when I [boring, again]. “Did you just try and do that on the website?” I cried. “I can do that! I just did do that! I thought you had special databases or something in front of you! What the hell’s the point my calling the other side of the world if...”, and so on. She didn’t, it turned out, have a special database in front of her; nothing, in fact, that a trained kitten with an internet connection wouldn't have access to, or indeed a similar strike rate with. This afternoon, however, in a rare display of wit, they buggered me about in a completely new way. I had reached TalkTalk Nirvana: I had somehow got through to one of their very helpful technical people in Johannesburg. “I’ll sort that out for you,” he said. “I'll get our technical team to call you back.” “Hmm," I said, “they failed to call me back about [boring] before.” “Well, let me take your mobile number too,” he said, so I gave it to him. “Okay, that’s on the computer now,” he said, as my mobile began to ring (I ignored it; I knew I’d only be about a minute more), “so someone from the team should be ringing you some time in the next three days.” The mobile quit ringing. We said goodbye, I hung up, I picked up my mobile, I checked its voicemail, and “this is Graham from TalkTalk’s technical team. This is the first of two callbacks. We will be calling you again within the next 48 hours”. On this occasion they were far too efficient—they had rung me back before I had even got off the phone from the first guy.
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Date: 2006-10-03 04:24 pm (UTC)TalkTalk brought a company I was using and suddenly all their service numbers were based in Ireland. The Ireland-based staff were perfectly friendly, but also perfectly unable to help UK-based customers, and perfectly unsupplied with any UK TalkTalk numbers.
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Date: 2006-10-03 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-04 02:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-04 02:30 am (UTC)All punchlines gratefully received.
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Date: 2006-10-04 09:48 am (UTC)