We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls....

Haven’t heard it for a while, but what often used to rile me was, ‘Thank you for calling (e.g.) British Gas.’

As if I’d been sitting at home twiddling my thumbs with nothing to do, before thinking, ‘I know! I’ll phone British Gas for a nice little chat.’

Trying to contact a company to get a repair, I was trying very hard to understand a young woman whose first language was not English. She asked me my age group and then proceeded to talk to me as if I was an imbecile . She asked if there was anyone in the house who could read a label on the machine for me. I will not be patronised by anyone especially someone younger, less intelligent and less educated than I am. ( now I am being patronising. I am sure there are intelligent people working in call centres who can't get better jobs)

I have Saga car insurance.
So far, they have answered very quickly when I phone and give excellent service.

I usually do something else while waiting in a phone queue, then the agent always sounds alarmed if I don't respond immediately, because I wasn't glued to the handset waiting for them.

It’s when you hear “your call is really important and us” on repeat that l feel my blood pressure go through the roof. If it really were that important why on earth don’t they just answer the wretched phone?

*to us.

I have had to call SSE on numerous occasions who always start with 'your call may take up to 30 minutes to answer' it's never answered before the 30 minutes is up, while trying to talk to the call handler l could hear what l can only describe as a party going on, loud laughter, shouting across the room, people chatting to each other, when l said l could hardly hear him and commented on how unprofessional it was he said 'it is a call centre' ☹ still not sure if my problem was resolved

The recorded voice doesn't bother me, it's the music when it's loud and 'rock-y' that puts me off. If I've really got to wait 20 minute speak to someone, please play some relaxing classical. Some Vivaldi perhaps. If you can find out the time of day they are least busy, I will phone then and usually get to speak to someone within 5 minutes.

Octopus has an excellent customer service, but if I can find an email to contact any other company I would use that method. However, for some reason, companies don't make it easy to use an email contact.

Our Doctors’ Surgery regularly sends us texts saying they are closing on a Wednesday afternoon for Staff Training. I would imagine the topics they discuss are :

‘How to avoid seeing patients’
‘How to exclude patients who are not computer literate’
‘How to make it tricky to make an appointment’.

Our surgery got a prize recently for rolling out the COVID jab in our area. I just wish they could be as efficient with returning to some normality. At least they have unblocked the surgery letterbox which was sealed during covid. ?

melp1

Octopus has an excellent customer service, but if I can find an email to contact any other company I would use that method. However, for some reason, companies don't make it easy to use an email contact.

... because they'd have to employ people to deal with the emails. The bottom line is profit, it's as simple as that.