Morons on telephone answerlines

[watervole]

I'm checking out different electricity suppliers. The web price comparison sites sensibly ask for your usage in kilowatt hours.

My current electricity bill (unlike my gas bill from the same supplier) lists my consumption in 'units'.

I phone their helpline and ask "Are the units on my bill in KWh?"

I am asked for my name, account number, and address. I say, do you really need that?

She says: "There's no need to be like that."

So, I give her all the details of account, etc. Then I ask "Are the units on my bill in KWh?"

She says "Yes."

Bloody morons.

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Call centre statistics.She'll be rewarded for answering a query against a customer account so quickly, and wouldn't get credit for just telling you the answer

[temaris.livejournal.com]

Not to say she wasn't both rude and initially unhelpful, and distinctly jobsworth about it, but there were probably reasons -- and rather less cynical ones than vicarage proposed. There could use different units for different sorts of customer -- perhaps a single business unit is 1000 domestic units sort of notion). Of course that would be solved by the question: are you a industrial, business or domestic customer?

They probably also culling stats on customer care usage to get an idea of whether they are under or over staffed, and whether they are fielding random enquiries from people who don't have accounts with them (school kids with projects are favourite...) instead of dealing with actual customers. Not that that helps you in the short term.

But either way, simply because she didn't explain why she needed the information (as you clearly would have preferred) does not mean she was a moron. Of course, call center staffing being what it is, it doesn't mean she isn't either *g*.

YOu should try BT for problems ...

[quarryquest.livejournal.com]

We have intermittent phone services in London (due to there being too many people wanting 'phones) and whenever you report a fault it takes them 7 days to fix it!