I’m not familiar with the works of Kafka, but after a run-in with a major telecom company I am now achingly familiar with the concept.
You know the thing … caught up in a nightmare reality which makes no sense and from which there is no escape.
It all started with a bit of spam I found in my junk e-mail purporting to be from debt collectors for 40 quid for an unpaid bill with a telecom firm.
It’s the sort of mince you consign to oblivion with the delete button, except for one thing. I have an active credit and ID checker (ever since someone in Spain cloned my credit card). I was alerted to a request for information from said telecom company but was assured it was just an address update and not to worry. Until the spam arrived.
Now, I have no account with this company, never heard from them about an unpaid bill until the repo squad arrived, adding fees by the way.
I decided to go to source and phone the telecom firm – especially as I’ve never had debt collectors on me in my life.
And here’s where the nightmare started. Have you ever tried to talk to a human being in a monolithic company when the automated responses demand either an account number or a phone number and you don’t have either?
Dial F for Frustration.
Thankfully, I have a degree of savvy in finding alternative numbers and eventually got put through to accounts … who wanted a reference number or phone number. They settle for an address which showed nothing. I had a lightbulb moment and had them check my old address. The one I left 10 years ago. Right enough I was supposed to be paying for a premium e-mail service (I took their word for it) at £1.50 a month and hadn’t coughed since 2012. Which was when my bank card expired. So, what efforts had they made to contact me so I could fix it? Letters by post to an address I hadn’t lived in for 10 years. So, you’re chasing me for a bill for e-mail. Why not e-mail me? … “eh, don’t know.”
Instead they let it linger for years then set credit dogs on me.
Dial F for Fury. I paid up and it still didn’t end.
I asked to make an official complaint. No one called back.
I got another e-mail from the credit vultures which prompted a “what the” call to the telecom people and another round of “account number/phone number” rigmarole.
Apparently the reference I got when I paid was “meaningless”.
Dial F for goodness sake. Or something like that.
Eventually, after days and hours I got a senior person who apologised and said I would be refunded … by cheque to my “new address”. The one where I’ve lived for more than a decade.
Sigh. I have learned something though. I will never use said company again no matter how many “special deals for you” they send. To my e-mail.
This article originally appeared on the Evening Express website. For more information, read about our new combined website.