Ofcom, the regulating authority over here in dear old Blighty for communications, are planning a crackdown on nuisance cold calling and text messaging. They have decided that they can/will investigate ‘annoying’ calls as well as ‘distressing ’ ones.
Now, I may be mistaken in this, but as far as I know, any bloody call which drags me out of the shower, in from the garden, or even one that makes me get off my chair, only to pick up the phone and have a few seconds of silence followed by a voice calling itself Nigel along with an accent which I can hardly understand, and who then struggles to pronounce my name correctly before giving the impression that we are old friends and that he knows that I’ve been sitting around all day just waiting for his particular call to send me into raptures of delight, and that I would then enthusiastically agree to buy whatever it is that he thinks that he might be able to sell me, can only be described as annoying and distressing.
A television programme was recently on in the UK following a call centre, a fly on the wall type of thing which had the media singing to its tune. Hang on a minute, this was a call centre, cold calling people who didn’t want them to call in the first place….and the media think that it was great television and that the manager was a star in the making who then proceeded to be invited on to other television programmes to have ‘chats’ as though he was a z-list celebrity. What is that all about!!! He was/is not a celebrity; he was/is an annoying person who cold calls people to get them to drop their hard earned cash into what amounts to his pocket. He is/was a …………… (please feel free to fill in the blank).
What Ofcom and the authorities should be doing is banning the whole bloody practise, making it illegal to cold call anyone….ever!
That is the only way to get these parasites off our backs.
Would I feel sorry for the staff made redundant from this simple little exercise? Actually no, because they could be redeployed to the various customer service departments who would then actually have enough people to answer the sodding calls that the customers who are having troubles with their various bits of equipment/bank/broadband etc make, and not sit and wait eons on the phone waiting for someone to answer, which normally means waiting for forty minutes only to have the connection break and having to start over again and spending all their hard earned cash on bloody phone calls to premium rate numbers to all these different businesses/organisations who once they have your money spend it on getting bloody call centres to phone you up instead, these same businesses/organisations who really couldn’t give a toss about all the problems you are in reality having!
Today’s rant over, I will now go and lie down with a cold towel over my head!