So, about ten days ago I thought it would be a rather nice idea to get myself a new mobile on account of my having never liked my current one and especially having put up with it for nearly two years now. So clever old me gets online and finds me a good deal. A painfully long wait of around ten days and finally a ‘sorry we missed you’ note from parceline is sitting on my floor when I get home from work.
Ok, fine, I wasn’t in, this was not unexpected as I do work during the week. The ‘sorry we missed you note’ explains that I can either ring or go on the internet to arrange another ‘standard’ delivery time, arrange a ‘premium’ delivery time or go and collect it.
Now, I can’t manage a ‘standard’ delivery time because this could be any time during the course of the day and I’m not about to take the whole day off work. For ‘premium’ I have to dish out a tenner and then all I get is either a morning or afternoon delivery window or on a Saturday morning. Have these guys not heard of the evening? So I think I’ll go collect it, but best find out where to collect it from though before committing to anything.
Me rings up the phone line, standard robot lady greeting. Press one for ‘standard’ delivery or press two for ‘premium’ delivery. Erm, no I want to find out where the collection place is. Ok, so I press no number buttons when prompted and after a wait of what seems like ages I finally confuse the robot lady and she tells me she’s going to connect me to a customer service assistant. Yay, what I wanted all along. Sadly, the customer service assistant is another robot lady who tells me to leave a message giving details of whether I want ‘standard’ or ‘premium’ delivery. I conclude that these robot ladies are not very bright so I try again. This time I play the whole mash the key pad and press lots of buttons when the first robot lady asks for ‘standard’ or ‘premium.’ Same result, robot lady two asks me to leave a message.
Ok, so I give up trying to talk to a human being or make polite conversation with the robot ladies and try their internet version. Enter reference number, fine. ‘Premium’ or ‘standard’ delivery or ‘collection.’ Right, collection please, when would you like to collect. Hmm, well finding out where I supposed to go would be nice but the earliest I can actually manage is Wednesday evening pretty much regardless where it is So Wednesday 18:30 please... I get this screen:
Ok, fine, I wasn’t in, this was not unexpected as I do work during the week. The ‘sorry we missed you note’ explains that I can either ring or go on the internet to arrange another ‘standard’ delivery time, arrange a ‘premium’ delivery time or go and collect it.
Now, I can’t manage a ‘standard’ delivery time because this could be any time during the course of the day and I’m not about to take the whole day off work. For ‘premium’ I have to dish out a tenner and then all I get is either a morning or afternoon delivery window or on a Saturday morning. Have these guys not heard of the evening? So I think I’ll go collect it, but best find out where to collect it from though before committing to anything.
Me rings up the phone line, standard robot lady greeting. Press one for ‘standard’ delivery or press two for ‘premium’ delivery. Erm, no I want to find out where the collection place is. Ok, so I press no number buttons when prompted and after a wait of what seems like ages I finally confuse the robot lady and she tells me she’s going to connect me to a customer service assistant. Yay, what I wanted all along. Sadly, the customer service assistant is another robot lady who tells me to leave a message giving details of whether I want ‘standard’ or ‘premium’ delivery. I conclude that these robot ladies are not very bright so I try again. This time I play the whole mash the key pad and press lots of buttons when the first robot lady asks for ‘standard’ or ‘premium.’ Same result, robot lady two asks me to leave a message.
Ok, so I give up trying to talk to a human being or make polite conversation with the robot ladies and try their internet version. Enter reference number, fine. ‘Premium’ or ‘standard’ delivery or ‘collection.’ Right, collection please, when would you like to collect. Hmm, well finding out where I supposed to go would be nice but the earliest I can actually manage is Wednesday evening pretty much regardless where it is So Wednesday 18:30 please... I get this screen:
What, where I am supposed to collect the thing from! Where is the fabled 'parceline depot.’ So I explore their website now that I appear to have committed myself to collecting it from…?
After finding no indication of where I’m supposed to go I send them a mildly arsey email. In fairness I get a swiftish response to this and am directed to Humphreys Road, Dunstable which is about 30 minutes away so I am not too unhappy with that in the event (although, I still don't know where on Humphreys Road I am going but am happy to settle for this after the hastle so far).
I spent nearly an hour trying to get to this point though. Why must it be so hard? All I wanted was to talk to a human being to ask an easy question (or even a mildly personable robot lady would have been ok too).
After finding no indication of where I’m supposed to go I send them a mildly arsey email. In fairness I get a swiftish response to this and am directed to Humphreys Road, Dunstable which is about 30 minutes away so I am not too unhappy with that in the event (although, I still don't know where on Humphreys Road I am going but am happy to settle for this after the hastle so far).
I spent nearly an hour trying to get to this point though. Why must it be so hard? All I wanted was to talk to a human being to ask an easy question (or even a mildly personable robot lady would have been ok too).
1 comment:
I'm not going pretend to know (or much care to be blunt) about the science behind it but I have found that either doing nothing or confusing the system by mashing all the buttons generally prompts the system to default to a human. In this case though it defaulted to a further robot lady, how do I get round that!
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