The other day, I was given advance notice of the car I wished to purchase and given a date and registration number.
I therefore decided to contact my insurer with the relevant details. Having everything to hand I telephoned my insurer. I think I was talking to an alien. He certainly was not born in the U.K. but his English was good. I started with my policy number then name then the registration of the car I was to have, the model of the car, then the day the policy was to be cancelled from one and started with another.
My friend told me ages ago that when you get to these call centres, they have a template with a lot of questions and they work their way through each question as it is shown on their template. I now know this is 100% correct. He asked me every question I had already supplied the information to. It is so disappointing to be asked questions that I have already supplied the information to. For ages he could not find the make of the car. I kept repeating the make and model only to be asked if I could repeat to him. Well after about 25 minutes we were beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel when I casually asked him where he was talking from. INDIA was the reply. I immediately thought of an old song, it must be well over 50 years old and I can't for the life of me remember who sang it only that it was a woman. Someone like Joan Reagan. The song was. "Far away places", with strange sounding names, far away over the sea, those far away places that I'm dreaming about are calling, calling me.
The call lasted just over 30 minutes, the last thing he told me was that at midnight the cover for my present car would cease and at noon the following day my cover would start for the replacement car. I will wait and see if all is well. An update on progress soon.
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I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to find that you in the UK also have to deal with out of country customer service reps. It is surely cheaper for your companies to outsource, as well. Great for countries like India, but not so good for the unemployment situation at home.
ReplyDeleteI have excellent hearing but I find myself too often asking these people to repeat their questions and explanations. Bad enough for me, but I imagine that it is very difficult for them to cope with all the regional accents in the UK and US.
I have enormous sympathy for the guys in India who try to help us because as you say, Mister Ed, coping with country and regional accents and idiom must be no easy thing.
ReplyDeleteWhen we first had our BT wireless broadband for our home computers here we got to know a very nice man in Bombay who got us to plug out machines into the landline so that he could control them. It was amazing watching the screen change as he reconfigured (the then) microsoft's settings to suit our new Home Hub.
After a couple such convos and remote control stuff from our friend in Bombay he got it right and in the last couple of years we've not needed to change things even once.
I hope you'll be able to say the same about your insurance.
Might we get a pic of the new car (or one like it)?