Happy New Year! … Bah, humbug! The old coal-fired steam driven computer expired in early December and the expert opinion was that it would be cheaper to replace it than repair and refurbish. Deal done. Now up and running, although still checking that nothing has been lost. Thank goodness for regular backups. Thanks to Fix-PC in Motherwell for their prompt response, excellent service and reasonable prices – and they still have humans to answer the phone if needed!
Then three weeks ago Facebook decided arbitrarily to ‘disable’
my account. No warning and no explanation. Also no response to repeated on-line
requests for answers or fixes, and no phone numbers to try and make contact
with a human. Which makes you wonder, if A.I. and Chatbots are doing all the
work what do the thousands of humans employed by the giant corporation actually
do on a daily basis?
Adding insult to injury Virgin Media has now locked me out of my email service. According to the nice human I spoke to this morning on the telephone the problem is not a simple software fix and so it has been passed to their Technical Dept – who may take up to FIVE days to fix it.
Ain’t modern technology and electronic wizardy wonderful - when it works?
However, it would appear that many industries these days concentrate their efforts more on sales rather than service and customer support. Happy to sell you stuff, but not so happy to respond when things go wrong. How many times have you waded through never ending lists of FAQs to find that nothing fits a particular problem. It just seems that the bigger a company gets, the less inclined it is to spend money and resources on actual customer support. That’s just another reason to worry about the rise and growth of conglomerates, the folk at the top are getting ever further from their customer base.
And it’s not just the so-called ‘Tech’ companies. According to the News these days, it would appear that the various power companies have an even worse record for dealing with customer complaints, and that’s if the customer can get through to them in the first place. To the ordinary folks on the outside it just looks as though hurdles are placed to deter them from complaining.
And those who are supposed to govern this once proud and industrious little nation on the outskirts of Europeland appear powerless or simply disinterested to do anything about it. Content to simply appoint toothless ‘Ombudsmen’ to oversee these conglomerates and multi-nationals which have long lost their sense of common human decency in the pursuit of profits, pay rises and bonuses.
Gawd, I’m sounding like a communist, but then again, that’s even worse going by what’s happening around the world.
What was it Private Fraser said: “We’re all doooomed.”
Happy New Year right enough. So if any of my friends, colleagues or contacts want to get in touch you’ll have to use the telephone. I have a new temporary Gmail account and will give callers a note of that. I will also shortly try to create a new FB account if the old one can’t be restored.
Happy days, eh?
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