By Jim Hagarty
2013
I have the world’s oldest dumbphone. Seriously. The first words ever spoken into it were, “Watson, come here. I need you.” Consequently, I have never been able to access voice mail on the darned thing. And lately, people have been leaving me voice messages. I would like to hear them.
Two months ago, I phoned Virgin Mobile and asked how I could do that, because the phone was not co-operating. A polite woman told me how to do it and I thanked her. Except her instructions didn’t work. So today, I decided to phone Virgin and get this fixed once and for all. So I did. Within the space of half an hour, I made five phone calls to the company and spoke to five different people. They all gave me the same instructions which I tried and which didn’t work.
It was kind of funny because each person who helped me was so confident that it would work. Finally, I reached a very helpful woman – support person number 6 – who seemed to really know the answer. She said she would reprogram my phone from her end and she led me through about five steps on the way to achieving that. She even stayed on the line while I tried the newly programmed phone but still no messages.
Let me look up the manual for your phone, she said. And the line went quiet as she did that. A couple of minutes later, I got the good old dial tone. She hung up on me. I know that she did because she asked for my cellphone number and I gave it to her. If she had been cut off accidentally, she would have called me back. I was thinking of making a joke about Virgin and getting screwed but I won’t do that (too late?). It was a Friday afternoon and she wanted to go home. I understand.
But my father always said the only way to punish a business is to not do business with them so it might be time to take a little fatherly advice.
