The Land of Frustration

Guess which country I am talking about? OF course it is the UK.

Let me tell you the things which are bothering me for a while. Today is the day of complaints.

1. Council Tax.

As an honest tenant, I am trying to pay the council tax properly, but the Manchester City Council does not seem to be a partner in this for me. I have sent them email, that I would like to pay the council tax monthly, rather then to pay 10 Months council tax in 7 individual monthly payment. After sending email to them, I received an automated reply, that they will reply me back in 10 working days.

Of course this has been passed already, and sending another 2 reminder emails to them did not get me closer to the solution. If they are unable to deal with something in email, then DO NOT STATE it on official letter they send to me. For God's sake, this is the 21st century, and I am living in a very well advanced country, so at least I could expect someone sends me an answer to my fucking bloody email. If you don't have the capacity for it, extend the number of employees. That is simple.

And the council is still claiming hundreads of thousand pounds from citizens in Manchester. I am a person who wants to pay, but without any communication I will not send money anywhere.

2. O2 account troubles

This one is my favourite. Mrs. Smith has swapped her pay as you go card to a monthly contract (O2 Pay Monthly Simplicity). This went amazingly well. Of course, another mirracle, why I had to pay £100 deposit to O2 when I made my contract, when I had a well-paid, permanent job, and why did she not have to pay a nickel for deposit, when she is working only 4 hours a day part time. Unsolved mystery.

Anyway, as it turned out, she was not able to see her bill / inclusive allowence online. She could log in, but when she clicked on "View my Bill", a different page showed up, which had no information at all about it. No worries, we have raised a trouble ticket with this issue on O2 site. (This helped me before). And an endless email chain has started.

Customer Service was keep on sending emails, in a standard form, what to do with the computer she is trying to log in (no matter I told them, this is NOT COMPUTER ISSUE). Of course did not help. Then they sent sms messages with new usernames/passwords, saying it is working. DID NOT WORK. Then they kept on sending the same standard emails what steps to do with the computer. In about our 6th email I told them to forget this was a computer issue as any other account could log in to O2 from the same computer. And I asked them for a solution.

An answer was given:

"Thanks for emailing us and I'm sorry you're unable to view your inclusive allowances details on your online bill.

I've checked your account and able to view your bill online and also the allowances details. This means there is no fault with your online account.

Please follow the steps below to view the details of your allowance: "

1 .BLA BLA BLA

2. BLABLABLA

Then this was the point I became furious. We called up their helpline in the evening, and after 15 minutes of waiting on the phone, we could talk to a customer service agent, who reseted the password, provided the proper username, and solved the issue in 20 second.

Then I asked for the manager to complain, and I told her I found ridiculous their email troubleshooting process, and the attitude of their customer service agents. I mentioned to her I was receiving a lot of email saying the same standard things, then at the end saying it is not their fault. And after my phonecall this issue could be solved in 20 seconds!!! She promised they will talk to the guy I was emailing with, but to be honest, I don't think it would make any difference. The whole system is built in wrong way. You can not change it by "talking to one person".

Anyway, got myself calm down after the phone call I was a bit happy finally I could manage something.

3. Amazon order - royal Mail (I used no capital letter on PURPOSE for royal Mail)

I ordered something from Amazon, and received a notification as it required my signature they could not deliver and I can pick it up at the local post office. This morning I got up earlier, caught an earlier bus, went to the post office, waited in the queue, just to have myself informed they DID NOT FIND THE PACKAGE, and advised me to come back tomorrow. And of course I received the only word which can make every trouble go away: SORRY!!!

Well Dear customer agents, postmans, postal workers, council employees, bank employees, etc, etc, etc of United Kingdom, using the word "Sorry" does not mean, that any trouble will be forgeted, and will be considered as No problem, nothing happened. Maybe it worked in childhood, when you were forced to "SAY SORRY!.....Soorrryyy!" whatever happened, and it was forgotten. But you are all grown up now, so this is not a magic word anymore! If you do your job, and make a mistake (we are human beings, we make mistakes), suffer the consequences, and try to correct it with your best knowledge, and not only say SORRY, and consider this has been solved.

I can not say Hungary is much better in such things, but I do believe you are not suffering so much of these human errors, or if you do, at least noone will tell you: SORRY.