BOF Posted June 13, 2012 Moderator Share Posted June 13, 2012 Now I save it all up and post it back to them return to sender. Isn't that what the recycling bin is for? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eames Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 Just had a phonecall from a call centre that went something like this: Me: Good afternoon One Future Telecommunications blah blah blah Call Centre Chimp: Hawoo, can I speak to Stacey please? Me: I'm afraid there's no one here that goes by that name. Call Centre Chimp: Let me just check my records a minute please. Please hold the line. *I'm put on hold* Call Centre Chimp: My records state that Stacey currently works at this address. *Lost for words* *Pause* *Hangs up* A few minutes pass The phone rings again, I answer Me: Good afternoon One Future Telecommunications blah blah blah Angry Call Centre Chimp: I Believe you just put the phone down on me, It is very important that I speak to Stacey. Me: Stacey doesnt work here, please dont call again. Angry Call Centre Chimp: May I speak to your supervisor. Me: Certainly *Puts call centre chimp on hold, where she has been for the past 6 minutes (probably 8 minutes after typing this) Very, Very irritating, particularly when I'm in the middle of something that needs to be done before I can leave the office this afternoon. In this situation, as annoying as shit it is for you......I would say that "Stacey" owes someone a shit load of cash and they can't track her down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EastEndVillan Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 Marketing and/or Human Resources. Does there exist a business function more densely populated by utter f*ckwits than these two? Gareth, let me introduce to Procurement (Public Sector), they take things to a new level. It's not about getting value for money, i.e. the cheapest, but about being compliant with rules and regs, even if it cost you twice as much!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted June 13, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted June 13, 2012 Whinged about it before, but whilst we're on it I had to do call centre work for an undisclosed bank for 2 years. Let's call them, oh I don't know, 'Tw@tWest'. Here was me, thinking I was applying for a clerk's job but as soon as I was in the door my job suddenly became (and they honestly used this word) "Prospector". Unfortunately, images that conjured up in my mind of dressing up like Yosemite Sam and digging underneath the vault were sadly premature. The job, from 9-5, was call up people and convince them to come in. Horrid, horrid work. We were locked in a room, given a load of spiel and told to cold-call people with loans, credit cards, overdrafts etc. and get 'em to come in for a "personal review" *shudder*. We were encouraged to say any sort of crap to get 'im through the door; lies, scare-tactics, you name it. The review itself is just to try and sell people something, anything, even if it clearly wasn't in their best interests but it's dressed up as this "MOT for your finances" type crap. If you didn't get enough poor sods through the door, you were expected to stay late unpaid. I managed to hide away and goof off for most of the two years, and jumped before I was pushed. In hindsight, I'd rather have worked in McDonald's.To be fair, I got a similar call from my bank (Lloyds) and I went into for the review, and it was useful. I switched my credit card to one with a lower APR, and my current account to a better one - it was one with a monthly payment, but included AA membership, which worked out cheaper than being in the AA separately, so I was better off. No complaints in this instance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted June 13, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted June 13, 2012 And to be fair, I judge people by their license plates (think I mentioned it in the early pages of this thread). Don't care what the car is, but the moment I see a personalised number plate I (inwardly) sneer. Which I realise is unreasonable, but I can't help it. And I expect several of my fellow VTers have them! again, agreed Moonster. Generally, Personalised number plate = prick. One of these years, if you see a license plate like this: with registration "UPD VLA", you'll know it's me (and that I'm a prick...). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted June 13, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted June 13, 2012 I think Jim Florentine has the right idea when dealing with telemarketers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villaajax Posted June 14, 2012 Share Posted June 14, 2012 Ford Focus, Nissan Juke, BMW X6 Nissans are crap cars, driven by crap people. Judging people by their cars. Well its true of all the Nissan drivers I know Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted June 14, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted June 14, 2012 Whinged about it before, but whilst we're on it I had to do call centre work for an undisclosed bank for 2 years. Let's call them, oh I don't know, 'Tw@tWest'. Here was me, thinking I was applying for a clerk's job but as soon as I was in the door my job suddenly became (and they honestly used this word) "Prospector". Unfortunately, images that conjured up in my mind of dressing up like Yosemite Sam and digging underneath the vault were sadly premature. The job, from 9-5, was call up people and convince them to come in. Horrid, horrid work. We were locked in a room, given a load of spiel and told to cold-call people with loans, credit cards, overdrafts etc. and get 'em to come in for a "personal review" *shudder*. We were encouraged to say any sort of crap to get 'im through the door; lies, scare-tactics, you name it. The review itself is just to try and sell people something, anything, even if it clearly wasn't in their best interests but it's dressed up as this "MOT for your finances" type crap. If you didn't get enough poor sods through the door, you were expected to stay late unpaid. I managed to hide away and goof off for most of the two years, and jumped before I was pushed. In hindsight, I'd rather have worked in McDonald's. That job sounds like my worst nightmare. I literally wouldn't be back for day 2 in that scenario Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genie Posted June 14, 2012 Share Posted June 14, 2012 I had an interview yesterday for an internal move, the interview consisted of about 12 questions centred around "give an example of...." It didn't do very well. When I came out and had a think I realised my examples were crap and I actually had some really good answers tucked away in my brain but sadly didn't recall them when needed. Oh well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted June 14, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted June 14, 2012 Whinged about it before, but whilst we're on it I had to do call centre work for an undisclosed bank for 2 years. Let's call them, oh I don't know, 'Tw@tWest'. Here was me, thinking I was applying for a clerk's job but as soon as I was in the door my job suddenly became (and they honestly used this word) "Prospector". Unfortunately, images that conjured up in my mind of dressing up like Yosemite Sam and digging underneath the vault were sadly premature. The job, from 9-5, was call up people and convince them to come in. Horrid, horrid work. We were locked in a room, given a load of spiel and told to cold-call people with loans, credit cards, overdrafts etc. and get 'em to come in for a "personal review" *shudder*. We were encouraged to say any sort of crap to get 'im through the door; lies, scare-tactics, you name it. The review itself is just to try and sell people something, anything, even if it clearly wasn't in their best interests but it's dressed up as this "MOT for your finances" type crap. If you didn't get enough poor sods through the door, you were expected to stay late unpaid. I managed to hide away and goof off for most of the two years, and jumped before I was pushed. In hindsight, I'd rather have worked in McDonald's. That job sounds like my worst nightmare. I literally wouldn't be back for day 2 in that scenario Indeed. If I had to do that for any length of time I'd be on a rope by end of the week. I did a day as a telesales once, selling alarms. Literally just a room of telephones, you were given a bundle of paper with numbers on and just had to work your way through it. The first part of the day was the management telling you how to sell things - this was vile. You were told to play on fears and basically scaremonger your way to rip people off. The management were scum, the kind of people for whom the only thing that mattered was the sale and nothing else, there were no morals to them. The main guy was all about money, he boasted about how much money you can make if you are good enough. When we actually got going on the phones, I noticed that all the numbers I was ringing seemed to be answered by the elderly... People were sometimes carted out of the room and had the head guys scream at them for this and that, literally have this bloke take you outside and shout and bawl at you. This was grown men and women being given a priamry school telling off with real venom behind it. I couldn't do it. Didn't go back the next day. My mates were all fine with it, some of them even quite good at it. It's given me a real hatred of sales generally and I'd never do it now, and wouldn't touch a telesales job ever again for sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted June 14, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted June 14, 2012 Yep, I don't think I'd ever do well in any kind of hard sell environment. I did half a day on one of these door to door charity sales things. I didn't even really know what the job was, just turned up for an interview that a friend arranged for me promising I could make some decent cash doing it for a couple of months (this was after uni and before I found a proper job) They invited me back the next day for a trial day (again without really telling me what my job was). I didn't even have to do anything that day, but when I popped to the shop to get a sandwich for lunch, I just never went back. Pretty shitty thing to do, but I just knew I couldn't do that job. And if I did, I would be really shit at it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted June 14, 2012 Share Posted June 14, 2012 Whinged about it before, but whilst we're on it I had to do call centre work for an undisclosed bank for 2 years. Let's call them, oh I don't know, 'Tw@tWest'. Here was me, thinking I was applying for a clerk's job but as soon as I was in the door my job suddenly became (and they honestly used this word) "Prospector". Unfortunately, images that conjured up in my mind of dressing up like Yosemite Sam and digging underneath the vault were sadly premature. The job, from 9-5, was call up people and convince them to come in. Horrid, horrid work. We were locked in a room, given a load of spiel and told to cold-call people with loans, credit cards, overdrafts etc. and get 'em to come in for a "personal review" *shudder*. We were encouraged to say any sort of crap to get 'im through the door; lies, scare-tactics, you name it. The review itself is just to try and sell people something, anything, even if it clearly wasn't in their best interests but it's dressed up as this "MOT for your finances" type crap. If you didn't get enough poor sods through the door, you were expected to stay late unpaid. I managed to hide away and goof off for most of the two years, and jumped before I was pushed. In hindsight, I'd rather have worked in McDonald's. Yep, I get this call periodically from a similar bank that I'm with (let's call them shatwest), telling me my account shows i'm due for a periodical account review. This will help me improve my finances etc, so when can I pop in for a meeting with an advisor. I've had 1 of these reviews before. Total waste of time, during which they try to hook you up a premium account which you have to pay for monthly, but you get all sorts of 'benefits'. Yet, every few months, they call me, and say I'm due another review, probably because I haven't been in for several years. They really do badly want to hook me up to a payment account. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarethRDR Posted June 14, 2012 Share Posted June 14, 2012 They don't tell you this, but there is a 'No Marketing marker' you can have added to your name which should stop the sales calls. Just tell the next bod who calls. What'll be happening every morning is someone will print off a list of local accounts from the system that have any type of existing lending, then doing a back-office check for each individual on a screen that holds all your information; credit rating, existing accounts and (most importantly for them) how much lending you are "pre-approved" for, be it a loan, credit card, package account or whatever. Anything they can get money out of you for. If you've asked for no marketing, this'll flash up on the same screen so if they then still call you you can report them to Ombudsman. The spiel for most of the calls tends to be along the lines "Hello Mr/Mrs X, according to my records you're overdue for your personal review, when can you come in?". All bollocks mind, there are no records of your meetings. You'll also get told that you're "eligible for an upgrade on your account", without specifying that it's just the package account that costs £30 a month which anyone can have. Even more insidious though is the 'Customer Advisors' who run the reviews. They're actively told to push whatever they can regardless of circumstance, the most disgusting of which is if they get a loan out of you they'll intimate that getting payment protection insurance on top can "help the application" (a lot of people have been conned by this over the years, hence the number of adverts for compensation on mis-sold PPI's). I'm intensely mistrustful of banks, having seen the shit that goes on behind the scenes. As soon as I got out of there I switched bank accounts (you have to have your pay go into a ShatWest account if your work for them, so all new employees are forced to open one), though to be fair I've never really had the same problems elsewhere as a customer at least (HSBC who I'm with now have been good for the most part, Nationwide who I was with previously weren't sales-orientated but couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eames Posted June 14, 2012 Share Posted June 14, 2012 They don't tell you this, but there is a 'No Marketing marker' you can have added to your name which should stop the sales calls. Just tell the next bod who calls. What'll be happening every morning is someone will print off a list of local accounts from the system that have any type of existing lending, then doing a back-office check for each individual on a screen that holds all your information; credit rating, existing accounts and (most importantly for them) how much lending you are "pre-approved" for, be it a loan, credit card, package account or whatever. Anything they can get money out of you for. If you've asked for no marketing, this'll flash up on the same screen so if they then still call you you can report them to Ombudsman. The spiel for most of the calls tends to be along the lines "Hello Mr/Mrs X, according to my records you're overdue for your personal review, when can you come in?". All bollocks mind, there are no records of your meetings. You'll also get told that you're "eligible for an upgrade on your account", without specifying that it's just the package account that costs £30 a month which anyone can have. Even more insidious though is the 'Customer Advisors' who run the reviews. They're actively told to push whatever they can regardless of circumstance, the most disgusting of which is if they get a loan out of you they'll intimate that getting payment protection insurance on top can "help the application" (a lot of people have been conned by this over the years, hence the number of adverts for compensation on mis-sold PPI's). I'm intensely mistrustful of banks, having seen the shit that goes on behind the scenes. As soon as I got out of there I switched bank accounts (you have to have your pay go into a ShatWest account if your work for them, so all new employees are forced to open one), though to be fair I've never really had the same problems elsewhere as a customer at least (HSBC who I'm with now have been good for the most part, Nationwide who I was with previously weren't sales-orientated but couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery). Whilst we are on the subject Abbey National/Santander are a bunch of lying cheating fuckfaces. But Barclays are excellent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timbaughan Posted June 14, 2012 Share Posted June 14, 2012 I don't know why I still have a facebook account. It's essentially pages upon pages of small talk and I **** hate small talk. People are obsessed with boasting about what a great time their having and taking pictures. Yeah taking 100's of pictures of a night up town telling everyone how '****' you were. If you were that drunk you would not be on facebook typing. Shit, I cant even find my own dick when I'm on a night out let alone having the ability to pull out a camera! I have many more grievances regarding facebook but I will save them for another time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted June 14, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted June 14, 2012 I'm with Barclays and must say I've never had a problem with them. The most irritating thing they've ever done is consistently send me junk mail trying to get me to take out a loan. But at the end of the day it's always just a letter (no phone calls) which you can just chuck. However, if YOU ring THEM, they do push the sales stuff, which gets irritating. BUt I found that when I finally got annoyed and said "Just STOP trying to sell me stuff please", they did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted June 14, 2012 Share Posted June 14, 2012 However, if YOU ring THEM, they do push the sales stuff, which gets irritating. BUt I found that when I finally got annoyed and said "Just STOP trying to sell me stuff please", they did. Same with Shatwest if you actually go into a branch for something, like paying in a cheque. "Ah, I see from your account that you're due a customer review. When Can I book you in to meet with an advisor who can help you maximise your money with us?". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted June 14, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted June 14, 2012 YEah that sort of thing "Oh I see you don't have house insurance with us" I actually fell for that one as they basically said they would DEFINITELY beat what I was paying now. Spent half an hour giving them details and their price was nearly double what I pay now. **** off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarethRDR Posted June 14, 2012 Share Posted June 14, 2012 That was the other trick I forgot about. For walk-ins, they'll quickly look up your direct debits to see if there's any payments for insurances or services that they also provide, then it's the "Oh, we can definitely beat X for you". I'd say about 70% of the time you spend waiting for a bank urchin to action whatever your request is is actually them checking to see if you can be sold something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarethRDR Posted June 14, 2012 Share Posted June 14, 2012 But enough about banks! Here's another; management-speak. I had an email just this very morning from a Director stating the need for a "clear RACI" on our organisation's new Twitter feed. I looked up "RACI" expecting to find the highest levels of fucktardery, I was not disappointed in this respect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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