A Week Off

We’ve been in Cyprus for the last week; we needed a break (and it’s been a long time coming). Amanda’s sister lives there and they (the sisters) are all that remains of their birth family (I still have both my parents and three siblings). According to all sources (that’ll be the ex-pat community) it’s been the warmest, fairest start to May for a lot of years. A dust storm that usually blows north east across the Mediterranean, from North Africa around the end of April (the 29^th to be precise), failed to materialise, and we’ve spent the entire week on various beaches north and south of Paphos, in spectacular weather. We’ve done a bit of everything: swimming, snorkelling, cycling, kayaking and the obligatory long walks, we’re knackered ... however that’s good knackered.

I’m starting this post in the departure lounge of Paphos international airport while waiting for a flight home, so things may change as I complete this tomorrow.

Before we left, we’d had a survey done on our home for a prospective buyer (of this I’ve made no mention until now, because these things are want to fall through). Effectively we are six weeks into what appears to be a very positive offer, on what could be a very quick sale. But; there are always buts. When we bought this place the survey came back with half a dozen provisos and a recommendation that we have a full structural survey or abandon the sale. Some of the provisos the surveyor mentioned were wholly inaccurate such as: an unsupported but removed chimney breast in the kitchen down stairs. Had the guy followed his own measurements he would have seen that the people who had the kitchen fitted, had just run a partition from the edge of the “alleged” missing chimney breast to the outer party wall, to make everything square for fitting kitchen cupboards, he’d cited that he thought there may be subsidence ... but he didn’t spot the damp, and so on and so forth.

The surveyor I saw a week and a bit ago, noticed the inconsistent external boundary and internal measurements and questioned me about them; in particular the “apparent”” absence of a chimney breast in the kitchen. I watched him check for damp, and either the beep noise was off, or the job we did last summer was as sound as I hoped it would be.

I guess after last year’s run of bad luck I’m just being a bit paranoid, and expecting bad luck, a bad report or some other upset to throw us off course again. So today is a big day, it’s phone the estate agency day, and phone the van re-sprayer day. I don’t like doing fingers crossed, I don’t like the worry of having other peoples opinions or their need to generate additional income fucking things up, but one has to be prepared thus. By way of explanation, our surveyor was doing a valuation survey. When it was booked in, the lady in the “call centre” said it was just a “valuation survey for now". That is a very telling statement, and it comes back to what’s wrong with this countries current business ethos. The subtext of the call centre reps phrasing strongly suggests that the surveyor needs to complete the survey and in doing so, find a way to push for either a Home Buyer report or a Full Structural survey, thus generating additional income for the umbrella organisation farming out the work to the individual surveyors (I suspected this so I asked the surveyor who he worked for, he said he was independent).

It’s that shite again ... some smart Alec somewhere has set up a company with a staff of hundreds of call centre agents fielding calls from estate agents and buyers, fixing prices for surveyors to do work, and taking a small margin off the top. But instead of being client focused, and getting the market moving, they are focused on generating additional work from the basic survey to increase their margin ... the problem with this is, that as soon a buyer see’s the chance that they may have to spend extra money on additional surveys ... they pull out of the sale, or as happened to our seller, and may now happen to us ... you have to put your hand in your pocket to cover the buyers additional fees because the surveyor’s remit is to drop in certain key words that make the mortgage lender put a stop on the mortgage until you’ve spent more money with the surveyor.

Clearly this isn’t a new practice, but when you add in the “call centre effect”, suddenly you are dealing with a purely process and profit driven machine. As I’ve blathered on about elsewhere, this ethos, despite all the bullshit in the “About Us” section of these web fronted, call centre centric businesses, about client care, customer satisfaction, core values blah blah fucking blah, there is one thing that’s key ... generate additional income, no matter the cost to the client.

Rant over. Time to make some calls.

Insurance companies, call centres, accountability.

It’s sixteen whole English days and a bit since our motorhome was rear ended. In that sixteen days I’ve called Direct Line seven times that I’ve recorded, and they have called me twice. The initial call was to tell them what had happened. They were incredibly busy because of the snow so wouldn’t take the call properly. They just took basic details with a view to calling us back once they had gotten over their bump.

This process led to our initial claim having a tic box ticked somewhere saying it was an enquiry. This generated an auto mail from some faceless person thanking us for our enquiry and that if a third party claimed via our insurance and we hadn’t notified them we could be liable for costs, loss of cover and we may even be killed and eaten.

That prompted my second call to Direct Line to say, we had made a claim already and that we needed to know what the letter was about. We were duly told it was an error and not to worry our claim was being processed. All good.

We received a note telling us that we needed to take our vehicle to a local Vauxhall dealership and crash repairers to be assessed, however I pointed out that their website stated that they looked after panel vans and cars, and that we would need secondary fixing around the habitation area where the aluminium skin has been damaged. They agreed, but realised very quickly that despite taking on the premium, that they (Direct Line) had no one on their books with the necessary skills to do the repairs, and we should endeavour to find our own repairer, which I did. Phone call three, gave them the details of the specialist repairer, the police incident No and a few more details of the vehicle our vehicle was shoved into. I asked the question: when can we expect and assessor to call us?

This has taken from Sunday 20^th January until the 25^th of January and I’m starting to wonder how busy the assessors are, that we haven’t even had a call?

I’m assured by the call centre agent that the assessors are very busy and know all about our case and will contact us within 48 hours of this call (25th January).  If I haven’t heard a from them after close of business on the 26^th of January I should phone back on Monday the  28^th of January ... you know what’s coming next. On Monday 28^th of January I called to say the assessors hadn’t called the previous week. I was told by the call centre person that the case was with the Assessors, and they would mail the assessors dept to remind them to call us urgently.

I was advised that “if” I hadn’t heard from the assessors by close of business on the 30^th of January, I should call back on the morning of the 31^st of January. So on the 31^st of January I called back to say that the assessors hadn’t called, I was told that the assessors knew about the case and that if I hadn’t heard from them by Friday 1^st of February, call back at any time that was convenient. So on Friday at midday I called back and said I was a bit worried and starting to get just a bit irritated by what was coming across to me as; either lies being told, or a fuck up somewhere in the faceless, nameless, process and script driven systems that companies employ today ... there is a cost to cheap car insurance, cheap telephone bills, and twenty four hour access, and the cost is quality, if you don’t manage your affairs then don’t expect these people to, because they aren’t paid enough to give shit.

The chap at the end of the phone checked out what was going wrong because I said the only thing I was calling for was to check why the assessors hadn’t called me, and that I had no other information to add. Effectively I gave him one task that was a good win for him and a good win for me. He quickly discovered that way back on the 19^th Of January when the initial enquiry was made, a box had been ticked and had never been un-ticked, and in addition to that, because the call had been pushed to the assessors so many times it was now stuffed in the way that only computers know how to stuff things.

At some point on Wednesday 6^th of February (I’m giving until lunchtime). If I haven’t received a phone call from the assessors I’m going into complaint mode. This will entail typing up a diarised timeline, recorded from the moment the second call was made to Direct Line and they “ummed and ahhed” and didn’t inspire any confidence (Time, Date, name of call centre agent and preferably their extension No:).

As with all such letters of complaint I shall bypass all the managers at every level in the call centre and instead find the three or four most senior board members and moan direct to them. This I have found works as well as Kryptonite against Superman. It worked when the Woolwich building society lost some property deeds they had to send two hundred yards to my solicitors. It worked with CountryWide Property Lawyers who really do put the count in country (did you see what I did there?). To be fair to Countrywide they waved their fees for our last house sale ... but by god they took us to the wire with our buyers patience.

So here we are; I have to deal with call centre people every day; in India, in Manila somewhere up North, somewhere in France and somewhere in Poland. The staff aren’t accountable and there is often very little they can, or want to do (other than call another call centre somewhere). The managers may have a pop at an individual over a particular error, but from bitter experience all they are interested in is ensuring that the error that propagated from their subordinate doesn’t head upwards to their own managers, as it just drags on and on and on, and that’s just messy.

So my top tip for kicking up a stink when you are being (for want of a better phrase) fucked around, is aim your complaint right at the very top, and then follow it up. It seems mean, but they are quick enough to take your money, they are quick enough to send you a snotagram telling you that if they can find a way not to pay you out ... they will. Another tip, do not be angry when you write to complain, no opinions, no judgements and no name calling, just the facts and as brief as possible. Remember that, have a splendid week, we’ll post again when we have some idea of WTF we are going to do next. J