Greasing the Wheel

So it just goes to show if you ask you get.

I think the phrase I'm looking for is "it's the squeaky wheel gets the grease"

The English tendency to moan or  suffer in silence is not one that has ever been one of the my most apparent traits.  

Perhaps at times I err on the other side, complaining just a little too much. I'm probably the first to admit that as I've grown into my 50s I've been hit with a dawning realisation that Victor Meldrew was a real person.

Take for example a call to my bank this week. Lloyds TSB. In a week when the banks are making the news changing the interest rates, mis-selling and generally conning the public out of every penny they possibly can at every possible opportunity, my bank have eventually listened to me.

Just before we went on holiday at the beginning of June I received a letter from my "personal business manager" a lady called Anne Osborne who resides somewhere in the Birmingham region. I've never met her. I think I spoken to on the telephone once in the 12 months I have had this account.....or perhaps I haven't. She may be fictional.

In the letter she asked me if I wished to renew my overdraft facility which will be expiring in August. I said that I did as having an overdraft on my current account helps my cash flow.

On our return from holiday two weeks later there was another letter asking me if I wished to renew my overdraft. Perhaps Ms Anne Osborne hadn't received my letter. Perhaps she is fictional ..............like those people at Downing Street who were sending out letters and yet didn't exist.

So yesterday I picked up the telephone and dialled the Lloyds business banking centre in Birmingham. Having been greeted by a machine that asked for my account number I eventually talked to a human being. I think they were human - on this occasion I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. They put me through to someone who could deal with my problem. Actually she didn't. When the person at the other end of the telephone picked up there was a stilted silence and then they asked me "yes can I help you?" I went through the whole of the problem again and then Govinda told me that I had come through on a staff line and compliance regulations meant that they had to record all calls so I would have to be transferred back.

I was transferred back…………. to a machine that asked for my account number again. That machine and I will be going out for dinner very soon! After parting from the machine, and wiping a tear of undiminished joy from my eye, I was put through to a bright perky Highland Lassie. She listened to my problem and then told me that she would be putting me through to somebody who could help me with it. She did, or rather she attempted to but probably because she was from the highlands and the telephone was a rather new fangled thing for her to cope with, she cut me off.

So that was fourteen minutes on the telephone down the can. I dialled again and this time got through to Rebecca who took all my details, listened to the problem, tried to put me through to somebody and then told me that nobody in that department was available to help and that somebody would ring me back within 48 hours! It was at this point that I decided I wasn't happy.

There's a brilliant website you can find if you enter "CEO e-mail addresses" into Google. It gives you the e-mail addresses of the CEOs of lots of companies, shops, banks, and service industries. It's not the first time I've used it and it seems to work.

A quick e-mail to the CEO of Lloyds TSB and by the afternoon I have had a reply from Executive Customer Services. The following morning I got a phone call from them  reasonably full of apology. They were more than happy to continue my overdraft facility for which they were going to charge me a fee of £100. I stayed silent. The nice lady who was now dealing with me, and she was very nice, this lady, said was there anything else that they could do. I said I thought there was and without further ado she agreed to reduce the overdraft fee by £25. I said I found that a little disappointing. She agreed to further reduce it to £50. I said well if that was as far as they felt they could go then it gave me an idea of how much they cared about their customers. She asked me if I would hang on for a moment and I said yes. She came back and said that in view of the disruption and inconvenience I had experienced on this occasion they were prepared to waive the whole overdraft fee.

A happy resolution with a little coda.

On the way to the studio that day  the phone rang again. It was the nice lady. She said that she had inadvertently processed my new overdraft request with £100 charge, so they would be refunding the charge. She also said that because they'd made this error and it was her "fault" - a word rarely heard in customer service worlds -  they would be giving me a further refund of £25.

I will be staying at Lloyds TSB for the time being I think.

The book continues on apace and I'm just approaching 40,000 words. I rather thought that July and August would be empty and fallow months so hence I gave myself my biggest word targets for these eight weeks. July is proving to be rather busy. I've just spent a very happy week filming an episode of series 3 of the sitcom "Him and Her" with a gorgeous regular cast who made me laugh a great deal under a director who really knew what he was doing. An unexpected joy.

In fact it was such a nice three days that it was not soured too much by the news that "Ian" is not going to figure in the next series of "Peep Show" which starts shooting at the end of July. I've done four series out of what was originally two episodes so I can be well pleased and grateful.

The final little bit of cream in our coffee this week is that in addition to the two tickets we already have for the weightlifting (an evening of snatch and jerk is just what I'm looking forward to!) Rich has managed to secure four tickets for the penultimate night of the Olympics where we'll see the 5000 m men's final and the 4 x 100 m men's relay final plus several medal ceremonies. We are able to take his parents along too so that will be a weekend to remember to look forward to.