Telco Rage – Pic Borrowed from the Courier Mail with Thanks.
Letter and A-Grade sarcasm by Rick le Rosbif AKA Ricardo
To my favourite bloodhounds at BPO Collections,
I did try phoning you again this evening but assume you could not (ironically) find the phone as it rang out for over 20 seconds before I accepted defeat.
So this is just a a short note of appreciation for your latest letter dated 22 February 2013 which was addressed to the phantom Mr Paul Danahay who, for reasons known exclusively to yourselves and Virgin Media, you insist resides at my home at 95 Womble Crescent, Bramley LS13 3NW.
I have to say I admire your dogged persistence in pursuing said scoundrel, who has a share value-shattering unpaid bill of £54.96 owing to Virgin Media, despite my earlier phone calls to the Virgin Media Debt Collections Team and your good selves explaining vainly that he does not reside at this address and never has done in the 9 years 11 months that I have lived here.
That is unless, of course, he is squatting in my cellar in which case I shall set a trap this evening and leave lots of unironed washing out. If I find any of it has been ironed, even just one humble sock, in the morning, then this will endorse your intuition and I shall apologise profusely.
Or he could be hiding in the attic à l’Anne Frank in which case perhaps you could send some former members of the Gestapo round to my house to scour the attic and flush him out though I realise there may not be many left as I would estimate the minimum age of any surviving members to be at least 90. It would be futile sending any ex-Gestapo members if they have zimmer frames or hip replacements due to the fact they will have to mount 3 flights of stairs and may risk death or serious injury in their line of duty for BPO Collections for which no doubt I will be sued for the minimum sum of £54.96 for gross negligence.
You have kindly informed me in your letter of 22 February 2013 that your field agents will ‘VISIT YOUR ADDRESS TO COLLECT THE OUTSTANDING BALANCE’.
I dare not presume whether this friendly notification is addressed to Mr Dunnarunner or to myself. I have, however, always prided myself on my hospitality to any guests, excluding Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, so would be grateful if you could kindly provide some advance notice so I can put the kettle on and additionally let me know whether they would prefer Lavazza, Nescafe Gold Blend, Nescafe Decaf or, if they are on secondment from BPO Collections the Andes, Cap Colombie.
I also have some Mocorran Mint Teabags if they do not like non-organic or unfair trade coffee which seems to be ‘de rigeur’ in these cash-strapped times.
When I spoke to the (clearly hard of hearing) company rottweiler at the Virgin Media Contact Centre, Miss Isla Rippyerspleenoutifyerdoonpay, to explain that (a) he did not live here and (b) I have never heard of him, she displayed her indisputably admirable skills in customer relations by suggesting that I (and I had always read in US Management Textbooks that there is no ‘I’ in teamwork: no wonder American MBAs are seen as worthless) go round all the houses in my street to ask if he is living with any of them. Bearing in mind that none of my parsimonious neighbours sent me a Xmas Card last December, it may be possible to assume that I am not overly popular as it is in my neighbourhood. But I do think this is an absolutely splendid example of ‘outside the box’ thinking by Virgin Media and I will now, for the rest of my debt-free life, regret transferring to BT instead of Virgin Media, when my patience was exhausted by the infinitely less tenacious buffoons at Orange.
I have copied some of my friends/associates/partners in crime who reside in places ranging from the bowels of rural France to the sprawling metropolis of Shanghai to the pristine beaches of sun-drenched Sydney or better still the aptly-named Runaway Bay in Queensland, in the hope that just one of them will have some inkling of his whereabouts. I will even go the extra mile and ask my garden gnome to keep an eye out and bludgeon this late-paying parasite over the head with his shovel until he begs for mercy if he spots him lurking behind my garden shed.
If you like, I can go 2 extra miles by asking my friend in China if, once he has finished knocking on the doors of all 24 million residents in Shanghai, he could possibly pop over to North Korea to see if the aforementioned fugitive is seeking sanctuary there.
It would help in this regard if you give me some vital details concerning this modern day Scarlet Pimpernel specifically whether his occupation in addition to the ‘Bane of Branson’ is either ‘nuclear physicist’ or ‘rocket scientist’. If so, that would lead me to believe he may indeed be holed up in some penthouse apartment in Pyongyang surfing the internet at this very moment compliments of Glorious Illustrious Kim Jong-un Boom Boom Online Media.
Yours sincerely,
The ever-vigilant Ricardo
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Seniors Banking…
Shown below, is an actual letter that was sent to a bank by an 86 year old woman.The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the Times.
Dear Sir:
I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month.
By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honor it..
I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire pension, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place for only eight years.
You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account £30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank.
My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas I personally answer your telephone calls and letters, — when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become.
From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person.
My mortgage and loan repayments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank, by cheque, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate.
Be aware that it is an OFFENSE under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope.
Please find attached an Authorised Contact form which I require your chosen employee to complete.
I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative.
Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Notary Public figure, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof.
In due course, at MY convenience, I will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me.
I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modelled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service.
As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Let me level the playing field even further.
When you call me, press buttons as follows:
IMMEDIATELY AFTER DIALLING, PRESS THE STAR (*) BUTTON FOR ENGLISH
#1. To make an appointment to see me
#2. To query a missing payment.
#3. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.
#4 To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.
#5. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.
#6. To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.
#7. To leave a message on my computer, a password to access my computer is required.
Password will be communicated to you at a later date to that Authorised Contact mentioned earlier.
#8. To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 to 9
#9. To make a general complaint or inquiry.
The contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service.
While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call.
Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.
May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous New Year?
Your Humble Client
And remember:
Don’t make old people mad. We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off.
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I walked into my then local branch of my bank in South Australia and said in a forthright voice when asked my business that I was there to reclaim the money stolen from me, which was my response to exactly this situation of being penalised an amount of around as I recall $38.00 dollars which was critical for a single person unemployment benefit recipient. Without a flicker of eyelid the teller went to speak to the bank manager and returned and reversed the debit. That was in around about 2001. I was alerted previous to this approach by a young lass I met in a women’s shelter that categorically the penalty was illegal and if anybody challenged it they would never be refused a refund. She had done it severally in the same circumstance. I repeated my own self styled approach to this each time the same happened to me again with the same result. I formed the view naturally the banks already knew as far back as then they were skating on thin ice setting up people’s accounts to fall into debit regardless an incoming amount they would perfectly well knew would cover any outgoings within the same time frame.
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Hi Sandshoe
Those banks have taken hundreds of millions of dollars out of unemployed people’s & pensioners’ bank accounts by charging questionable penalty fees for years, and no government official asked any question until recently. When I meet an old pensioner or an unemployed person for the first time, I specifically ask this question of whether or not if their bank ever charged them penalty fees. ALL of them said “Yes.” EVERY single one of them!
Banks are the robbers!
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Nice to hear from you hph. I concur they are robbers, the worst bank robbers that walk the earth because of their charging as well as that outright and blatant theft the correspondent sarcastically had a go at them for the fees they have out of the accounts of individuals who are paupers,notwithstanding when I have raised issue about the other bracket of usual fees for special reasons of having been conned in the first place to be a client on the alleged grounds of diminished fees, I have been advised why don’t I eg take out ALL of the amount of the pension each fortnight to avoid the fees.
I’m not frail, but are these tellers conventionally advising frail aged to withdraw the entire financial clout they have in the whole world every fortnight to avoid fees? The damned account is supposed to provide some security.
In regards to participatory justice, if a pensioner withdraws their entire pension to avoid fees, what is diminshed is then opportunity to participate with some immediately available spending power online where financial purchases are cheaper. Again, regards geographical location and physical capaity, where I live the supply of goods and services is strictly limited so the only way someone without their own wheels can secure specific goods and services is online. They blatantly have the least interest in the day to day welfare of the aged of any business provider.
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My barber had no end of trouble from Australia’s own telco. Multiple letters regarding his account and contract. He kept ringing to ask who sent these letters, and can I speak to him/her. ‘It’s only the Computer’, was always the reply. He sent a rather rude letter to ‘The Computer’. Never had a letter or phone call from them since!
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I like that Big M that he sent a rude letter to ‘The Computer’. Up there for not being alienated. 🙂
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They’re an irritating lot those phone jockeys at telcos. Ms Couldntgiveastuffwhoyouare copped a load after unsolicited calls trying to foist their latest plan upon me after being told on six separate occasions that I didn’t want to change plans my telco so thoughtfully appointed a Jananth Telcowallar as my account manager. Janath just off the boat from Bangalore was so proud to be my account manager, I just though of him as a pest. Mind you they’ve been a bit quite since they copped the load a little while back.
Mind you one of my clients was prone to high blood pressure when anyone form a certain Singaporean telco walked through the door. In fact they were tempting fate to do so.
Loved the story Ricardo.
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Good one, tell me is the Le Rosbif free of Le Chevauxbif? You can never be too careful now-a-days.
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Pleased to say my house was still standing when I got home this evening. No reply yet from either BPO Collections or Virgin Media. I shall keep you posted but,as a contingency measure, could you please organise a whip round in case I get taken hostage. Rick
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Ricardo, I’ve read this three or four times now and it never ceases to kill me. This time around it was the “infinitely less-tenacious buffoons of Orange”. Classic. Many thanks for a good belly laugh !
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“…the aptly named Runaway Bay in Queensland”
It is that part of a freshly prepared bowl of cream that has that mysterious delight of a wee peak rising out of it and on top a delicate and perfectly rounded curl. Classique. It is still cream but, so very freshly prepared for table. Your excellent application as well encourages me to press on editing the successive parts of ‘The Making of That Joke (the Writer’s Cut)’ that reveal consequences of being thought humourous writing letters of real life complaint and of being complained about.
Kind wishes Ric Le Rosbif. Many thanks.
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Absolutely loved this Rick ! I’ve never had so many chuckles over my breakfast coffee (the pod variety-not the instant or unfair trade that you were to offer your BPO collectors !)
Brilliant thank you !
lindyp
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