The Times - UK (2022-04-30)

58 Saturday April 30 2022 | the times

Money

5

IN THE

SUNDAY TIMES

TOMORROW

plus

No jobs, big debt: meet

the class of 2020

special report

How Facebook

became a friend

of fraudsters

Ignoring complaints doesn’t make them go away

I

had to contact my local council

travel assistance department last

week about an urgent matter

regarding a disabled relative.

There is no phone number, just a

generic email address which

bounces back with a reply that it is

dealing with high volumes of

communication and can take 15

days to resolve issues. It’s been like

this for almost a year.

It is extraordinarily frustrating

and there is very little you can do

about it. When a reply comes,

quite often your specific query has

been unanswered or is

misunderstood, and you have to

go through the whole process again.

This ludicrous system is

presumably in place because the

travel assistance department was

once being bombarded with calls

and emails from local taxpayers

whose cases were not being dealt

with and it wanted to find a

way to manage them

better.

In essence, its

answer to bad

service was simply

to give taxpayers

less opportunity to

complain. This

“service spiral”

seems to be the

thing among bad

businesses and local

authorities at the

moment.

All that happens is that

complaints don’t go away, they just

drag on. It always makes things

worse. Just look at British Airways.

For a while now it has felt as

though BA has acted like a child

putting its hands over its ears and

shouting “la la la” so that they

don’t hear bad news. You can

rarely get through on the phone,

online queries aren’t answered,

and heaven help you if you dare to

want to spend a voucher for a

cancelled trip.

It is exasperating. Recently I

flew to Venice and needed

to check part of my

booking, but every

attempt to contact

BA resulted in me

being quoted a

generic (and

irrelevant) bit of

advice. In the end I

had to chance it at

the airport.

The rot started

more than a decade ago.

I remember the day The

Times contacted its press office

with a routine query about a

passenger’s problem, only to be told

it would no longer be answering

individual complaints from our

readers. “But they’re your

customers too,” I remember trying

to explain. Bad customer service is

a business model for some firms.

They put in enough friction to deter

time-wasters from getting in touch

— lots of companies do this very

effectively; it’s called sludge

economics.

But I don’t believe BA has done

this on purpose, and councils that

provide vital services to taxpayers

certainly should not. Rather I

suspect they are just inept, running

under-resourced service

departments, often with decrepit

technology.

By refusing to pick up the phone

and answer emails promptly they’re

actually cutting off the very people

that provide the lifeline to keep

their businesses going. It takes a

poor kind of management to

believe that is sustainable.

They need to start from the

beginning and ask: what does good

customer service look like? And

then develop a system that helps

them to deliver that, not one that

shuts customers off altogether.

@jimconey

James

Coney

Money

editor

Comment

32%

of energy

customers are

unhappy with their

supplier

I

gave my boss a £10 note a few

weeks ago when he needed to

take someone for a cup of coffee

and realised that he had

forgotten his wallet.

For a few days afterwards he made

great shows of looking in his wallet

and, not having a tenner, promising to

give it back to me next time.

“I’d forgotten all about it,” I would

graciously half-lie.

Now we’re a few weeks on

and I really do think that

he has forgotten — but

I haven’t. The

problem is, I don’t

know what to do

about it.

I’m very bad at

saying those six

little words: “Can I

have my tenner

back?”

How did it get to

this? I have no idea

why it is so hard for me

to say that sentence. Here I

am, a fully fledged grown-up

with two kids. I can speak directly

and confidently when needed, and

yet, when it comes to requesting that

any money owed to me is returned,

all those skills escape me. My boss

and I get on well and it’s not as if he’s

My boss owes

me £10. Why

is it so hard to

ask for it back?

strapped for cash. It’s not about

him, though, it’s me.

The whole area provokes

Woody Allen-levels of

introspection. Should I not just

be more generous and give up

on small sums that are owed?

Should money matter less?

But at the same time: why

can’t everyone remember all the

money they owe all the time,

so I don’t have to have

an awkward

conversation — is

that too much to

ask?

Then again nine

times out of ten I

leave it too long to

ask and then it’s

too awkward to

bring up.

I don’t think you

have to be Freud to

see that I overthink

the whole thing, but I’m

not alone in finding it

complicated. And things are

only going to get more difficult as the

cost of living means that we need all

our tenners to give to our energy

providers.

Friends or families who already

have tensions over money are going

to find that these only

increase. People may feel the need to

call time on debts they had previously

pushed to the back of their minds;

arguments over wills will become

(even) more common, arguments

over how the money in the joint

account is spent will intensify.

It’s not just individuals either.

Companies that have had to be

patient in collecting debts during

Covid are not going to be patient for

much longer. Energy companies will

find that more customers are

struggling to afford their bills — and

their solution to this is to move them

on to more expensive prepaid meters,

so that they cannot run up debt that

the poor energy firm will have to

chase. They are not going to think too

hard about the morality of it all,

because empathy is too expensive a

commodity right now.

Individuals will continue to agonise

over the ethics, though. On the

discussion website Reddit there is a

forum called Am I the Asshole?. You

give the details of a dilemma you have

experienced, telling both sides of the

story, and readers act as judge and

jury, deciding if you’re in the right or

are the one at fault.

An increasing number of posts

lately have concerned lending money

— my bête noire. Either someone has

lent money and it hasn’t been repaid

or they have refused to give someone

a loan and that has caused offence.

One of the more popular posts was

written by a man who lent £3,000 to

his sister two years ago to set up her

business. She promised to pay it back

within six months.

He had lent her money previously

and she had always paid up promptly.

But this time, she didn’t.

She didn’t start the business, got

engaged, had a kid and is planning

her wedding. Money is still tight for

her, and she keeps promising to pay

back the loan but adds that as her

brother is an excellent saver and he

doesn’t have a spouse or kids, he

doesn’t need the money right now.

But he is moving soon and the money

would come in handy because

otherwise he will have to dip into h

is savings.

He doesn’t want to put her in a

tough spot if he asks for the money,

but he needs it. So, the question is:

will he be the asshole to ask for it?

The response was near unanimous:

he was Not The Asshole (or NTA to

use the site’s terminology). I suspect

he knew this all along, but having the

internet validate his position gave him

the push he needed.

I sometimes wonder if people

younger than me have fewer

hang-ups about asking for money.

They’re certainly much more

forthright about everything else,

from sex to their political opinions.

The lessons I will be teaching my

children are not to worry about

asking for money back from friends.

Don’t feel bad, and definitely don’t

think twice about asking for it from a

company that owes you, but always

be polite.

But also: be as generous as you’re

able, and people will be generous

back. Life is short and while you don’t

want to be the person always getting

a round in, having a constant ledger

in your head of what everyone owes

is no way to live either.

And always, always, ask for that

tenner back from your boss.

Postscript: after she filed this

column, Jessie’s boss made an online

transfer for the £10 he owed her,

along with profuse apologies.

Home Economics

Jessie Hewitson

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