Imagine if next time you rang a call centre they answered you in two minutes, only passed you on to one other person and actually let you close your bank account/phone contract without stalling for weeks on end. It would be heaven, wouldn't it? Or it might be Brazil.
The president has just announced a crackdown on time-wasting call centres, threatening fines of up to £96m for companies that keep customers hanging on the telephone. Apparently the country's consumers are sick of being placed on hold interminably and passed from pillar to post without their problem being addressed. Sound familiar?
Many of your comments on Monday's post about consumer complaints revolved around frustrating and unhelpful conversations with call centre staff.
So should we consider adopting President Lula's policy over here? Now that many companies have brought their phone operations back to the UK, after a brief and unpopular experiment in outsourcing them overseas, legislation could be introduced in this country that would cover a lot of the companies we deal with on a day-to-day basis.
It probably wouldn't mean an end to some of the more surreal conversations you've been having with call centre staff, such as Oldwifey's encounter with BT or Yorkenstein's dealings with NTL, but it might save us all a bit of time and effort.
