Consumer complaint

For someone of a fairly sunny temperament I do get angry, very angry indeed, at times.

Maybe one for all you journalists filling the columns of the financial pages or, possibly, Which? consumer magazine.

The phone rings – I answer with my name – as one does – to be asked whether they can speak to me. Enter irritation one: They already know they are talking to me. Then, and this is where my blood pressure rises, I am asked to answer “some questions for security”. Whose security? What security? I haven’t got a clue who I am talking to and they ask me my birth date, my mother’s maiden name, what the cat had for breakfast.

It’s ludicrous and I am not playing that game any more. I dare ask who I – yes, ME, the one they want confidential information from - is talking to and the conversation got so inane I nearly combusted and had to remind myself of my polite upbringing. 

Extracting a tooth must be easier than eliciting that caller’s company name – never heard of them before, so no clues there; reassuringly I was given the first name of the ‘operator’. When I asked what the company’s business is and what gave me the pleasure of their contacting me I was reminded that first I needed to answer those ’security’ questions. Am I mad, or am I mad?

No, I am furious. Unfortunately the poor girl didn’t have the brains to enter a conversation that might have led to something so I asked her for the company’s telephone number with the hollow promise to phone them back and ask my own questions “for security”. I know prostitution is not exactly the cream, as jobs go, but surely one better than working in one of those call centres.

I would have liked to have comforted her by telling her that at least she didn’t have VOASF on the line but she wouldn’t have got the joke.

U