El Andalous - Frustrations

Sahl Hasheesh -Le Clessidre Beach Bar

What’s the point of having a blog if you can’t have a self-indulgent get-it-off-your-chest session?

I don’t even know where to start but I’ll restrict this to two communications issues that I had over the weekend.

Firstly, I wanted to pay some money off my mortgage. I thought the banks were desperate for money? You wouldn’t think it if you look on the websites for information on how to give them their money back.

Mine was further complicated because it is with the Woolwich but the mortgage is handled by Barclays, so I’m not even sure which bank it is I’m dealing with.

Anyway, the website said you had to phone. No other option. It was a freephone number, so they probably think there’s no harm. But I’m in Egypt!

After searching around, I found the online chat. These services are usually pretty good, but this one (I went on it twice) was only giving out information that was already on the website and even then didn’t give me the right number to phone and then linked me to a callback feature which wasn’t available for mortgage customers. They refused to give any email address.

In the end, I had to phone, but it used voice recognition and keying in entries to get you into the correct queue. Unfortunately, the system didn’t recognise my key entries (I hate mobile phones!) and I had to shout across the entire complex before it would hear my voice.

First time round, it routed me to the wrong queue because it misunderstood me. I stayed on for a while, but then got nervous that I would be refused service at the end, so hung up and tried again.

Second time around, and again there was a long queue. But at least it was the correct queue. I could sense the credit on my mobile phone running through my fingers as I waited. I faffed about further on their website to pen a complaint about their lack of service to customers living abroad while I waited. There, on the complaints site, was a number for those living abroad to dial. The world is full of ironies.

I wrote my complaint anyway.

Finally, the phone was answered. The woman seeing to me was very good, so once I was through it was fine. I was left with just 50p credit (5 LE) on my mobile. And I thought I’d just done a large top-up!

The next day, the complaints people emailed me to say that they couldn’t process my complaint unless I provided the Barclay’s sort code number for my bank account! Huh? I don’t have one and it’s completely irrelevant. Just a good excuse to say they don’t have many complaints, I reckon.

Alas, my other issue this weekend was with my kindle paperwhite. My three new books refused to transfer to my kindle. I went to the website and did all the suggested troubleshooting, none of which worked.

So, that was me, on the online chat function again. I got so far with the first guy when he decided I needed a specialist. The specialist came online and then wrote me a message, without even saying “hello” first, that he was ending the conversation because I hadn’t responded!

I tried again. The first guy probably thought I was rude because he wanted to start with “How are you?” but I just dived in with a rant about how I’d just been cut off. Anyway, he put me through to a new specialist.

This guy was very good and very patient, so I don’t have any complaints. It’s just that we were chatting for 2.5 hours trying out various things to get it to work, but the issue didn’t get resolved, and I ended up losing all my books.

Also, in Egypt, I don’t have unlimited internet. I have to buy packages of gigabyte usage each month. So, I had started trying to resolve my kindle problem at 5pm as from 2am-6pm, I still have quite a lot of usage left on my account. I didn't think it would take more than 30 minutes to resolve. From 6pm, my allowance is rather tight, so I wanted to avoid that timeframe. Unfortunately, I had to download a huge file (it crashed first time, 93% through, so I had to do this twice!) and this was after 6pm. Consequently, later in the proceedings, I got a message from my provider warning me that my monthly allowance was 80% used. Aaargh!

In the middle, Safi came round with a guy to discuss whether UK TV could be installed in my flat. And I still had this guy from amazon hanging on the chat. It was all a big mess.

Anyway, in the end, after a factory reset (which is where I lost all my books), he decided that my kindle must be at fault and they’d need to send me a new kindle. He asked me to phone, but I said that I didn’t have enough credit, so he said email would be OK. I warned him that getting me a new kindle may not be so easy since I live in Egypt (they don’t deliver to Egypt), but I didn’t go into details as it was now 8pm and I was getting hungry. And my remaining internet usage was dwindling!

This morning I had three messages from amazon – two about the return of the kindle and one to apologise about being cut off. I had to laugh at their slogan “Your feedback is helping us build Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company”, not, I hasten to add, because I have any bad thoughts about their service.

As it turned out, when I syncrhonised my kindle (again!) this morning, my items suddenly all appeared, so the problem has somehow been resolved. So, at least there is a happy ending there and maybe I should leave today’s blog on that positive note.