Delivering the goods

In the finest seasonal tradition of ‘no room at the inn’, some late additions to our planned family gathering presented the prospect of three of the younger generation camping out in the dining room on the bare (and rather draughty) wooden floorboards. To avoid giving them an authentic Dickensian Christmas experience, possibly with authentic nineteenth-century ailments to follow, we ordered an inexpensive large rug online; it’s something I hardly ever do, but the lack of suitable local options and the impossibility of fitting the thing into the car left no alternative.

After some delays, the rug was due yesterday evening but the estimated time came and went with no sign of it; instead, we finally received a cheerful notification that it had been delivered half an hour earlier and signed for by ‘Sharon’ -  who? -  with an accompanying picture showing it standing in a puddle beside a completely unfamiliar front door. Fortunately a (somewhat grumpy) phone call to the delivery company elicited an apology and a promise to set things right and the rug finally turned up an hour or so later after its brief unscheduled sojourn in our nearest town.

The whole business left us with several unanswered questions, not least why Sharon, assuming she exists, happily signed for an 8x12ft rug she hadn’t ordered, but the most surprising thing was the matter-of-fact response on the part of Customer Services; their reaction suggested a practised routine for dealing with a common problem, like parcels lost in transit (or abandoned on the doorstep at the mercy of ‘porch pirates’) and the dreaded ‘sorry you were out’ card.32

Presumably this is, in part, the fault of a system in crisis, overloaded by the continuation of habits acquired in lockdown when rapid online delivery became a necessity for some and an indulgence for many. According to a study quoted in the Telegraph, deliveries run into the billions each year and roughly a third of all recipients across all the major companies in the sector experience a problem with the service (44% for evri). Given the working conditions, I suppose it’s hardly surprising:

…many drivers see part or all of their salaries made up of “pay-per-drop” fees – in some cases less than 50p per package – meaning they only get paid for a successful delivery. The structure potentially pushes drivers to dump packages or claim a delivery attempt was made, rather than trying again.

Did our driver, I wonder, decide that on a rainy Friday night he could not afford to make the time-consuming rush-hour drive out of town - the traffic is horrendous in the run-up to Christmas - and abandon the rug at an earlier stop in the hope that the company or its insurance would sort it out? And are customers really so accustomed to this kind of thing - or eager to have their goodies delivered to their door - that they are willing to put up with such abysmal failure rates on a regular basis?

And what will happen when, as is surely inevitable, the whole system finally breaks down and customers realise that the smaller shops which once fulfilled virtually every local need have vanished from Britain’s high streets, crippled by competition from the out-of-town retail giants and the internet and given the coup de grâce by Reeves’ budget plans?

A man with a squirrel on his head

The increasing ubiquity of IT means that, like, I suspect, many of our generation, we spend a fair amount of time attempting to provide long-distance tech support by phone for older relatives baffled by the workings of an iPad or the intricacies of the internet, often because they find themselves with no alternative but to go online for some essential transaction.

By and large, they’re all pretty competent with general browsing, emails and so on, but every now and then something goes awry: the title comes from a particularly surreal recent conversation where three attempts to send a link to an embedded instruction video from a company’s website - a link we had both previously tested ourselves - elicited a baffled “But it’s a film of the weather forecast, dear” and then “All I’ve got is some people on a beach”, finally followed by “Now it’s a man with a squirrel on his head”.

Part of the problem is that the idea of proceeding by trial and error - the essence of learning to handle an iPad, phone or PC - is an alien one to a generation brought up to be careful and to avoid mistakes wherever possible; ‘click it and see what happens’ is not their natural reaction to a problem. It’s even worse for those who had experience of early computers at work many decades ago; they still suffer from the fear of failure learned in the days when a single error in input or timing could crash the whole system.

In a sane and humane world, they would be free to ignore the existence of the internet apart from its usefulness for entertainment or family and social communications. However, the increasing difficulty in carrying out day-to-day interactions with public services and businesses by any other means forces them into using it; companies and government offices alike are striving, to use the revealingly demeaning official term, to ‘drive customers online”.

It’s something I wrote about in 2017 and, since then, the pace has, if anything, accelerated, especially since Covid closed workplaces and obliged customers and clients to deal remotely with isolated workers, many of whom are still working from home nearly three years on. The telephone helplines nominally still exist but these days, if they are answered at all, there’s a strong chance of being cut off or left on hold while someone lets the dog out and no possibility of the call being passed to a supervisor or someone with better information.

It’s all well and good to put everything online and reduce telephone communication to a bare minimum to keep costs down but, in a world of online scams and cyber-crime, to rely on it to the exclusion of everything else is not only cruelly staking the least tech-savvy customers out like captive goats for scamming predators (as well as disenfranchising many with physical or visual impairments which prevent them from using the technology); it is also exposing all of us to risk, defended only by the weakest links in the security chain.

And that, of course, is before the inexplicable glitch, the solar flare or the cyber-attack which brings the whole thing crashing down; one day, firms - and government and health agencies - may have cause to regret putting all their eggs in the online basket. In the meantime, while it’s all still working, spare a thought for everyone unwillingly compelled to negotiate the mysteries of the internet and ending up with a man with a squirrel on his head.

Cracking the whip

While scanning the 'sits. vacant' columns recently, I came across a reference to staff being involved in 'driving customers online'.

Something about the implied coercion rankled and I later tried to find the advert again to investigate further. I didn't succeed but, to my surprise, a quick google of the phrase produced a veritable cornucopia of books, webinars and courses devoted to the subject using exactly that term, along with a collection of self-congratulatory reports (among which was the rather worryingly curtailed boast that:

'We've been a key part of the Sainsbury's Groceries online team for a long time, driving customers online through many traditional channels, including execution...' [sic]) 

Restaurants, retailers, power companies and banks all appear to be utterly unabashed, not to say enthusiastic, at the idea of compelling customers to contact them via the internet. It's not a new phenomenon (see 'The Bank that likes to say "F**k off"') but, judging by the amount of training material out there, it has become a lucrative and widespread business in both private and public sectors.

Perhaps it's just me, but I find this suggestion of 'driving' people into changing their behaviour more than a little repellent and no more so than when it concerns basic services; while customers can choose not to patronise a shop or restaurant which is trying to force them online, the same tactics used by the NHS or local councils are little short of bullying.

In between, there are the banks and utilities, where customers have a nominal choice but cannot easily dispense with the service altogether. It's bad enough for those of us who are computer-literate and can make the change, albeit under protest; customers who cannot comply often end up paying more and finding it hard to access their own accounts.

I'm quite happy to deal over the internet with companies where that was my first port of call but, where I initially chose to contact the organisation in person or over the phone, I expect that to continue where possible and, more importantly, particularly over financial or health matters, I neither expect nor want to be pressurised into putting my personal details online.

I've long thought that the banks and utilities, along with some public services who really ought to know better, are effectively treating us as somewhat recalcitrant livestock, applying the Patrician's principle of extracting money from the populace:

"Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo." ('Jingo': Terry Pratchett)

To talk of 'driving' customers anywhere suggests that they see us that way too.

 ----------------------

To lighten the mood a little, the same trawl through the listings turned up this little gem of unfortunate phrasing:

'Richmond Vale Academy offers an A-certificate in “Fighting with the Poor” in St-Vincent and the Grenadines.'

"...and two sugars while you're about it,"

There was a truly delightful moment this week, while writing a tongue-in-cheek apologetic e-mail to a colleague, when Autocorrect stepped in with 'mea maxima cuppa'.

Of course, being a machine, it has no intelligence to apply to the situation; it simply follows its programming, however inappropriate to the circumstances. Oddly enough, you could say much the same thing of the staff at my recently refurbished local branch of 'The bank that likes to say "F*** off!"'.

Having failed in my bid to take my business elsewhere during the lengthy closure (see previous post), I reluctantly found myself in a gleaming new atrium complete with rows of hole-in-the-wall machines to put your money in, take your money out, do the financial hokey-cokey and move your cash about so that, with any luck, the staff don't have to bother with you at all.

Those unwelcome customers who do venture between this robotic Scylla and Charybdis must now head deep into the windowless rear of the building to where four tellers sit in judgement behind raised desks. Although they look human, yesterday's experience has given me cause for doubt.

Having established that I wanted to pay several cheques into a savings account, the cashier asked me whether I was happy with the rate of interest.

"No, I'm not, but it doesn't matter; once the cheques have cleared, I'm thinking of moving my account to another bank."

The response to this was a blank stare for several seconds, a vague, "Oh. Alright then," and, after another pause, a brightly artificial, "And is there anything else I can help you with at all today?"

I'm sure this cashier must have passed some kind of training in customer service but, faced with a real live dissatisfied account holder, her instructions simply did not equip her to react. Instead, she clearly dismissed the problem from whatever she was using for a mind and carried on according to her programming.

During the long trek back to the door, I stopped to ask one of the suited managerial types lurking complacently on the sidelines why there had been no prior notification of the four-week closure. There was no need for it, he replied, with a barely concealed sneer, because all facilities were available through the bank's online service.

It appears that I was right when I suggested the omission was a deliberate attempt to force unwilling customers into online banking. Having seen Leg-Iron's passing mention this morning of computerised payment methods allowing us to be tracked and monitored, I am starting to think that this is why the bank is so intent on driving us into the arms of cybertechnology - it's not so much about cost-cutting as keeping us under control and, preferably, in debt.

Those who still persist in using cash, passbooks or cheques will presumably be increasingly regarded as dangerous subversives and, as such, will be reduced to a second-class service, something already happening with interest rates. There are still plenty of us around  - a recent discussion with friends suggested that this is because more than a few are haunted by what happens to female bank customers in 'The Handmaid's Tale'.

Visitors to the refurbished branch yesterday were obliged to skirt a table festooned with banners and bearing dishes of crisps and bottles of orangeade, while each of the counters at the rear was furnished with a large bowl of Haribo sweets, all presumably intended for the consumption of customers - another manifestation of how they try to infantilise us and a thought-provoking indication of the taste and maturity of the new manager.

This ostentatious welcome would have been far more convincing had there been any effort to find out why a customer was sufficiently dissatisfied to want to close an account - any one of those idle men and women in suits could easily have taken a few minutes to sit down in a side office to discuss what was wrong. An apology for the inconvenience would have been a good start.

And they might at least have offered me a cup of tea.

'Shut up and take my money!'

"Seriously!

I just want to open a savings account. Today.

I do not want to be assigned an interview three days hence with a 'customer welcoming operative' or whatever you call that bored, over-groomed harpy in the corner drumming her talons on the pseudo-Scandinavian office furniture.

Neither do I wish to be given details of your online banking service. If that suited my needs, I would be sitting comfortably at home instead of bandying words with an intellectual eunuch amid a festival of slogan-ridden posters depicting happily grinning customers who, I can only assume, hail from some alternate universe where your bank actually provides a decent service.

Smartphone banking? My phone is not smart. It hasn't a clue. It's a mindless half-wit; in fact, the two of you seem to have a lot in common.

Is it really so difficult? I just want to park a few spare quid where I can get at it, preferably earning interest somewhere near the current inflation rate. I have no desire for 'solutions' or 'advantages' or 'plus accounts' and you aren't going to impress me with complimentary magazine subscriptions and theatre booking services either; ultimately it's still the customer who pays.

And now you know what I'm after, it's clear I'm not the sort of customer you want. It's odd, isn't it? A cheque to deposit - yes, some of us still use them - and yet you are giving me the sort of brush-off your predecessors would once have saved for an habitual defaulter asking for yet more credit.

So you stand there, a symphony in StayNew polyester with a face to match, and tell me 'there's no one available today', even though there are more staff in here than there are customers. Having established that I don't want any of your myriad complex 'financial products' and 'packaged accounts' - sales targets to meet, perchance? - you have clearly decided I am not worth bothering about and I can tell you the feeling is mutual.

In fact, here's an idea; why don't you take your Ultimate Privilege Platinum Flexi Select Classic Account package complete with fringe benefits and transfer it to a location about your person utterly devoid of solar activity?"

...is what I wish I'd said, instead of smiling politely, accepting a business card and walking away, never to return.


(This is a follow-on post to 'The bank that likes to say "F*** off!"'.)

The bank that likes to say "F*** off!"

Picture the scene: it's a rainy Tuesday morning in the high street and you have a long list of things to do, the first of which involves a trip to the bank.

Fate, however, has other plans. The bank doors are firmly shut, the night safe sealed and the windows blanked out inside. Taped to the door is a single sheet of paper with a printed message: the bank will be closed for refurbishment for the next four weeks.

You are, it helpfully adds, welcome to visit any of the branches in the neighbouring towns, a mere 20 miles or so away. Judging by the expressions of the half-dozen or so customers reading the notice, this is a rather less than satisfactory arrangement.

A quick straw poll makes it clear that none of these customers - some of whom make weekly visits to the bank - has been notified by letter, text or telephone call that a month-long closure was imminent and neither was there any public indication in the branch itself.

Instead, the bank staff took advantage of the bank holiday weekend to 'fold their tents, like the Arabs, and quietly steal away', leaving  behind one functioning cash machine and a great deal of resentment.

A clue to the motive behind this moonlight flit may be found in the notice on the door, which recommends using the bank's online service instead. Though I doubt that they contrived the closure expressly to force their customers to adopt it, the way online banking has been pushed recently by cashiers and other staff suggests that the management saw this as a golden opportunity to increase the take-up rates.

This is, perhaps, the beginning of the end for those who cannot or will not embrace the new technology and commit their savings to the dubious security of cyberspace. Banks already offer favourable interest rates and extra benefits to online customers in a clear bid to hasten the day when they can dispense with an expensive and inconvenient real life presence on the high street for good.

The same phenomenon is creeping into other spheres; businesses and the public sector increasingly offer discounts for online bill payment or official registration - occasionally followed by notification that their database has been hacked and 'it is essential that you change all your passwords immediately' - in a bid to maximise their profits and efficiency by removing any semblance of human interaction with their 'valued' customers.

"We are" said the Tavern's resident Wise Woman recently, "being farmed - it's the only word for it."

Sadly, I have to agree.

Red nose irritation

It's Comic Relief's Red Nose Day this week, as A K Haart's timely post reminds me; a worthy idea that has been hijacked to incorporate and give licence to irritating behaviour on a national scale while, it turns out, being funded in part out of the television licence fee.

The original inspiration had much to recommend it, and the comedians who started it up put a great deal of time and effort into creating something that offered decent comedy in exchange for public contributions, but in the years since, it has expanded to become a BBC-led extravaganza of celebrity glitz and trivia accompanied by a national idiocy-laden free-for-all.

With the notable recent exception of the' Great British Bake-Off', the BBC has largely taken the lazy route of replacing established comedians performing sharply-written sketches with 'Oooh! Look at the celebrities doing funny things'; the trouble is that one man's 'funny' is another man's 'bloody stupid', and there's a distinct whiff of lowest common denominator about the whole thing.

And then there's practice of replacing the speaking clock and inviting people to ring it to donate, though at least this year it's Clare Balding rather than sound-effect-laden silly messages read by Radio 1 DJs. That was a particularly low point; it used the usual number, the one dialled by anyone who really needs to know the exact time, in which case the last thing they are likely to want is someone messing about on the other end.

But what I really dislike about the whole business is the thinly-disguised witch-hunt on the part of some participants; if you display anything less than inane enthusiasm when accosted in the street by an over-excited shop assistant in an expensively-hired chicken suit waving a collecting bucket, you are somehow guilty of wanting African babies to starve.

Well, this year, at least, I have the moral high ground; I have a funeral to go to on Friday and anyone who tries anything unreasonable on the way is likely to get a loud and cathartic earful on the subject of inappropriate importuning of the public.

A small and utterly reprehensible part of me is secretly hoping it will happen.

The disservice sector

Faced with a recalcitrant mobile phone last week, I set off for the company's local shop - one of five phone shops in a single shopping centre. All the assistants were already occupied with customers so I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The assistants - all three of them - eyes fixed on their computer screens, resisted all attempts to make eye contact; the customers fiddled silently with the mobiles they were buying or had brought in for repair. Nobody said a word.

With a bustling concourse a few feet away, six people stood facing each other across the counter in stony silence: I started wondering whether I had inadvertently intruded into a piece of experimental theatre.

Finally, after more than ten minute of trying unsuccessfully to catch someone's eye, I gave up and went home. Fortunately the Artful Dodger, being a child of the 1990s, understands these new-fangled things and has since managed to restore the phone to working order.

A ten-minute wait gives you plenty of time to study your surroundings. The piece of shop furnishing that struck me most was a large red sign prominently displayed on the counter, warning of dire consequences for anyone who physically or verbally assaults one of the shop's employees.

If what I experienced is a taste of standard high street practice these days, then no wonder Britain's service economy is in trouble - and no wonder they need that sign.

Where Did They Hide the Bodies?

A new party game emerged this week after a futile search of my local bookshop. Susie (Fat is a Feminist Issue) Orbach’s ‘Bodies’ came out on Monday; which section had they put it in? The assistant had no idea, and so began a bizarre guessing game.

Was it Psychology, perhaps, or Popular Psychology? Nope. Mind Body and Spirit? Wrong again! Women's studies? Sociology? Health? Popular Culture? The assistant finally found a copy in the window, so we’re still none the wiser.

Since then the regulars at Peachum’s Tavern have been considering a category name for books of this kind, designed to be read with a certain smugness by those who are aware of the issues and ready to enjoy a bit of righteous indignation while feeling reassuringly intellectual.

After much deliberation, it was the Artful Dodger who came up with the best solution; here in Newgate, Ms Orbach’s opus will join those of Eric Schlosser, Naomi Klein and Mark Lynas on a shelf clearly labelled ‘Mummy’s Moral High Ground’.