Peter, Jane and the outsourced helpline

25-07-2006

Doing my bit for the environment I decided to take BT up on their offer of switching to a paperless bill. All I now have to do is manage my bills online. Sounded straight forward except that I can not log in since I changed over to paperless billing. It says my login details are incorrect but I know they are not. They offer to send me the correct details to my email address which is my old one because I forgot to update it. So I email BT customer care outlining my problem, that I cannot login and that my email address is no longer valid.

A day later I get a reply from a name I can’t pronounce located at BT’s customer service center somewhere in India. They write "With regards to your e-mail, I can confirm that if you are registered on our web site www.bt.com that it is possible to change your email address yourself. Please log in to www.bt.com and then click 'Update Profile' and the 'Personal details' link."

Ok. First I practiced my breathing techniques for a minute then closed my eyes for a second before replying. I held back on the sarcasm and pointed out that maybe there was a communication problem (them failing to read my actual email) and I explained in more detail (bigger font) that maybe they had some difficulty understanding what I was saying so I explained it very simply. I even described Peter and Jane logging on to the internet to check their online bill before taking Sam the dog for a walk in the park only to discover, shock horror, that they could not log on, oh no.

Ok so I lied about the sarcasm.