Monday 9 March 2009

Yet another telephone rant........

Our latest mobile phones are Nokia. They are not the latest most fashionable state-of-the-art mobile phones by Nokia. They just happen to be the latest, ie most recent ones we have bought.

Just thought I would clear that up before anyone thought I had spent hundreds on a phone that purports to be a camera, a television, a radio, a computer etc etc. And I chose them because Nokia was the least unethical phone I could find available to us here.

So, there I was faffing around with the controls and decided to go for automatic updating of date and time. But when I'd done it, it turned out to be a couple of minutes behind the automatic time on my computer - which has to be correct of course, because it is my beloved Hal Apple laptop. Then I tried to undo it. No, I couldn't change the date and time because it was now automatic. I went through exactly the same steps, and just got a snotty message on screen telling me to stop interfering.

Looked at the nokie online stuff. Nothing of use there, the manual was the same as the one I have. I sighed for the Good Old Days when manuals truly were manuals and actually had some useful information in them. I emailed Nokia support. Naturally I got an automatically-generated unhelpful acknowledgement.

Then I received this: Thank you for contacting Nokia Care. Greetings to you. I hope all is well with you. In response to your email, kindly refer to the steps given below to deactivate the auto update of your Nokia 2680 Slide date and time: Menu > Settings > Date and time > Date (Deactivate the Auto Update) Menu > Settings > Date and time > Time (Deactivate the Auto update) I hope the above helps....

So I emailed back pointing out that I had already tried to do that, but I had not found any option to disable the auto-update and that it didn't come up like that. Then I received a reply (not from the same person): Thank you for contacting Nokia Care. If are unable to activate the auto update of time and date, please ensure 2 things. Firstly, please check if you have followed the steps below: Select Menu > Settings > Date and time. To set the date and time, select Date and time settings. To set the formats for date and time, select Date and time format settings. To set the phone to update the time and date automatically according to the current time zone, select Auto-update of date & time (network service). Secondly, if you are unable to auto-update the time and date automatically, then this feature is not activated by your network operator. Please contact your operator to activate this feature. Have a pleasant day ahead, .... To ensure proper handling, please continue to use the current subject line. Please don't hesitate to contact us again if you have any further questions.

Naturally I emailed back yet again - as invited: I don't think you have understood the problem. I HAVE selected the auto-update option. I now wish to DISABLE it, and can not find how to do it. I can no longer set it manually. It will not let me disable the autoupdate. I want to know how to do that. Thank you. Still waiting for a reply to that one, which was sent more than two weeks ago.

A few points to make: It is not actually my phone, it is my Partner's. But as I am the techy one in the house, I tend to sort computers, televisions, video recorders (in the old days), mobile phones, any programming for thermostats etc etc etc.

Sadly the world does not believe that women are capable of absorbing this amazingly complicated clever stuff into their fluffy little cotton wool head that passes for a brain. So I wrote to Nokia in Nigel's name. I figured if I wrote in my name I would get something on the following lines: 'Do you have the phone switched on?' 'Do you even know how to switch the phone on?' I found it irritating at the time that I chose to use my partner's name but I knew I would lose it if I got a patronising response and I thought it was based on the fact that I was a woman.

As events turned out, I got two useless responses anyway. Sadly I am suspicious about these responses. The English is not what I would use. It sounds on a par with my mediocre Spanish, in that it is not incorrect but it is not normal usage. It just doesn't sound right. Of course I had gone to the same setting to try and reverse it. Dear me. I had looked through every single option on the menu. And as for the second reply....words fail me. Why tell me how to do something when my question is about how to undo it??? Uh??? Why answer a question I hadn't asked?

It seems James and Daniel are Service Professionals from the UK and Ireland team. That doesn't mean they are based there at all though does it? Despite the apparent 'British' or even 'Celtic' names. I really don't give a toss where the online support team is based or what they are called. It would be helpful if a) they could actually provide a solution to the problem and b) read the question and not send a totally ridiculous answer. Maybe the two authors really are called James and Daniel. Whatever they are called, or wherever they are from, they are clearly the on-line equivalent of a telephone call centre and equally as useless.

And why aren't they called Jemima and Daniela for example? Ah, yes, that's right. No credibility because women aren't regarded as sufficiently techy. Now, I find it very hard to believe that in this on-line support centre, there isn't a single woman Service Professional employed, despite the fact that this sort of work is exactly the low-income slave labour job that is carried out by women. But I bet they aren't allowed to send emails in their own name as a woman, and heaven forbid, if it isn't a nice 'British' name. I find it very hard to believe that your online service centre is truly staffed by Jameses and Daniels and other such trendy names.

I should say that in the end I restored it to factory settings, saving all the personal info, and used the usual tweaks to set it back to how I like it. So it's all hunky dory now. Anyway, Nokia, I think you should give ME a job working from home to answer banal questions from technologically incompetent customers, because quite clearly your staff and the crib sheet they follow are just a waste of time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

wiw!

Having a daughter who works in financial services call centre, when she went to India to see the call centres her company were setting up there, she told me the staff had training sessions on..........

British Soap Operas, British TV, the weather, the pop music, the social life (you know binge drinking, pubs, pork pies and pork scratchings etc) and all sorts of things connected with the UK.

Why? So when the Indian workers speak to customers ringing from the UK, they can converse ably with the customer. Hence making the whole thing sound as it it is coming from somewhere in the UK!

Anonymous said...

I think they sound like a bot. Like as though some sort of computer program identified key words/phrases from your emails and sent you a form response from a database of responses. I'd be surprised if any human read your emails at all.