scripted call center conversations are getting worse :(

[Hedders]

fk me!
I just got off the phone with Pipex

Bint "Could you please help me with giving me your first name"
Me "[gives first name]"
Bint "ok, thank you for giving me that information can you please help me by giving my your last name"
Me: [gives last name]
Bint: ok, thank you for giving me that information can you please help me by giving my your house number.........

Me: You are welcome for the information yes i will assist you in establishing my house number..it is 87"

This goes on until she has my address and DOB..

All i want to do is reactivate the Caller ID service that used to work but now doesn't..

After a very long winded call where i had to repeat myself and the reason for the call several times she asked me to hold for two minutes while she finds out when the service will be activated. She comes back and then takes about a minutes to tell me it would take ten days.
I am ready to hang up when she starts with a whole new thing i have not heard before.

"Ok thank you for your call Hedders, today you called us about your caller ID not working and i looked into that for you, and then we talked abot reactivating the caller ID service and then i explained to you that it would cost £1.95 a month, and then i explained to you that..

"Me: WTF?? thank you for the recap, bye.

Ten minutes for one operator to put in a request to activate caller ID, that's progress.

[Hedders]

Engineer1 said:

Hedders said:

fk me!
I just got off the phone with Pipex

Bint "Could you please help me with giving me your first name"
Me "[gives first name]"
Bint "ok, thank you for giving me that information can you please help me by giving my your last name"
Me: [gives last name]
Bint: ok, thank you for giving me that information can you please help me by giving my your house number.........

Me: You are welcome for the information yes i will assist you in establishing my house number..it is 87"

This goes on until she has my address and DOB..

They have just confirmed you are authorised to deal with the account. You would be pissed if they let any monkey change stuff on your account.

Hedders said:

"Ok thank you for your call Hedders, today you called us about your caller ID not working and i looked into that for you, and then we talked abot reactivating the caller ID service and then i explained to you that it would cost £1.95 a month, and then i explained to you that..

"Me: WTF?? thank you for the recap, bye.

Ten minutes for one operator to put in a request to activate caller ID, that's progress.

The repeat confirms for their records that you authorised the change, knew the details and costs. If more businesses use call centres and online stuff to conduct business then this will happen more often, compare this to the mobile phone contract sold to an old man thread on here.

As far as i am concerned, my telephone company should recognise my telephone number and take it for granted that a request such as reactivating caller ID from a normal sounding adult does not really need any security verification!

If the actual owner of the phone then reports that they were burgled and the burglar was the person that phoned up and ordered caller ID then it can be cancelled again, if that sort of thing is the reason for the security :P

[Hedders]

judas said:

I've had a few calls over the past week that have opened with 'This isn't a sales call...' - which is as far as I let them go before hanging up. Do they really think people are that stupid?

Don't bother answering - it was rhetorical (and the answer is yes - people really *are* that stupid)

Sales person: "This isn't a sales call"

Me : "And this isn't me hanging up" *click*