By Brian Nicholls

Last updated 11:42, Wednesday, 27 August 2008

Speak to me. Hello, is there anybody there? “Please wait while we connect you to one of our operators.” Hello is there anybody there? “Your call is important to us.” Hello. Hello. “For quality and training purposes calls may be recorded.”

What quality and training for what? To avoid talking to any customer who might have a problem or a complaint.

It is almost impossible to talk to anyone one the telephone except people who want to sell you something or get more money out of you for a service they already provide (badly). For anything else say hello to the invisible man.

Even if by some freak of telecommunications you do manage to get to speak to a real human being the chances are that they know about as much about the product or service they are supposed to provide as a badly educated earthworm. It’s all deliberate of course. The whole concept of customer service is to provide as little service as possible in the hope that you will just give up any idea you ever had of complaining or getting your money back.

I may just be accident prone but everything I touch seems to go wrong. This year I’ve been sold a holiday that didn’t exist. I bought an electrical item that didn’t work and having asked United Utilities for a water meter to be fitted I find my house has always had a water meter except that it has been used to meter the water for the property next door. The kind lady who lives there has been paying for me, my wife and two daughters for years.

In all these cases getting anyone to take responsibility for putting these things right has been a nightmare. Nobody listens because nobody cares and nobody cares because the huge companies they work for care even less than they do. Some lowly operator puts your ‘details’ on the computer and that is the last you hear of it. The only way to get anything done is to write a letter. In the age of total communications the pen is still mightier than the phone.