75ZT Community

Further musings on life

Does anybody know why cheddar doesn't taste like cheddar anymore? I remember Anchor Special Reserve cheddar which was a notably tangy, tasty cheese. The stuff you seem to be able to buy today has the texture of lard and little taste other than a nasty sort of bitterness, even the "top of the range" cheddars.

Does anybody know of a cheddar that is still worthy of the name please?

Next, automated telephone systems. With the ever increasing proliferation of 0845, 0871 "non geographical numbers", the days of a simple telephone enquiry seem to have vanished. Of course, with the phone company and the callee both making money out of the long suffering consumer, its easy to see why a 30 second enquiry can turn into a 10 minute marathon.

I use a website that gives you the proper phone number for a great many organizations in the UK and will also search the "non geographical number" database and come up with a normal phone number as well, so, because I have Virgin media's free call system, I don't end up paying for these calls but they do really become tedious. A case in point:-

I made a phone call this morning which required nothing more than a date. It took me close to 1o minutes to achieve it. Firstly with the round robin which keeps bringing you back to the first level menu, then the abrupt end to a call where the menu reaches a dead-end, then, having negotiated the auto prompt menus, during which they took my name, post code, membership number, product code, date of birth and one or two other bits of information, each tediously spelled out two or three times, I eventually got through to what might be loosely termed a human operator. At which point I was asked to provide... name, postcode, membership number, product code... etc. etc.

When I asked why she hadn't made use of the information I'd provided to the automated system she said "oh - that doesn't go anywhere".

Ahhh... that's better

I'm with you on the phone calls!

BT's webchat annoys me. They prefer you to use the web option as its "quicker" and to be fair I did connect in less than 20secs... result! Explained my question and then nothing... 1 minute later it tells me I've rejoined the queue and the expected wait time is 24mins. Put the phone down, used the free phone number, harrassed the computer till it gave up and transferred me to an operator who then dealt with the query which took them less than 30 seconds. Length of call was around 4 minutes total!

Cheese: Sainsburys Mull Of Kintyre Cheddar (not exactly sure how you can do that but there you go) is the best cheddar I've tasted in a long time!

Phones: Try calling HM Revenue and Customs - 4 minutes to get through the menus and then another 16 minutes to talk to a human. All the time you are waiting the "on hold" music is dire and the line is always crackly!

HMRC. It's a number that is 'local rate' which means its a premium number from a mobile, and not included in your inclusive calls. If you use services like you suggest, there's a number you can call for HMRC. But if they suspect you are calling from the UK, they refuse to deal with you. It's meant only for overseas callers.

HMRC....I recently waited 45 minutes to talk to someone....and that is by no means the longest they have kept me waiting...

But... what about the CHEESE chaps?

raistlin wrote:But... what about the CHEESE chaps?

I refer you to my post above!

Dave wrote:Cheese: Sainsburys Mull Of Kintyre Cheddar (not exactly sure how you can do that but there you go) is the best cheddar I've tasted in a long time!

HMRC seems to be coming out of this badly!

Out of interest, when/why did it change from "Customs and Revenue" to "Revenue and Customs"?

Do you have a link for the website that gives you the telephone numbers please Paul?

Cheers

Mike

HERE you go Mike