Eyeroll moment of the day...

[MarmaladeSideDown]

I'm sitting here at home and the landline rang but stopped before I got to it, so I dialled 1471 to find out who it could be (family members often call it as my mobile reception here is rubbish). It was a local number and seemed slightly familiar to me, so I searched online and discovered it was my GP surgery, so I rang them to find out what they wanted.

The receptionist answered saying how could she help so I explained about the missed call. "Well it wasn't me", she said. Oh right, I thought. Here we go.

She then asked for my name and I said that DH and I both lived here and gave her my name and his. "Well, no-one has called you" she said so I suggested that perhaps the call was for DH. He has a hospital appointment tomorrow for investigation into an ongoing condition, so I wondered if it might be about that, but since he isn't here at the moment I thought I'd better find out in case he needs to contact them. "Well I'm sorry" says she in a very officious voice. "I can't give you any information about anyone else". I pointed out that it was they who had rung first, and I was just trying to be helpful in calling them back in case it was urgent. Not good enough apparently, and she refused point blank to even tell me whether it was him they were trying to contact.

What a pointless waste of my time that was.

Has anyone else felt themselves rolling their eyes out loud at the brick wall of officialdom today?

Yabu

Er... this is Chat, not AIBU.

Anything else to add to your remarkably brief sentence, or is that it?

YES OP- I had very similar a few weeks ago, but it wasn't my GP practice! They'd left an almost unintelligible message on my mobile about a change of appointment time.

When I googled, it was a GP at the other end of the country. I work in healthcare, and thought that someone might miss their appointment. Most practices have a bypass number which medical professionals can call, so I looked them up, but that went to a phone that was never answered. I then called their main reception and waited and waited! I had the same barrage of questions.
'Who was the appointment for, what is their DOB?'

'Sorry, I don't know, but it sounded like Delia, or Amelia, or Cordelia, the message was so quick, I couldn't understand it'
'Well what is your relation to them?'
'As I ALREADY explained, I had a message from your practice, by someone that sounded like Umar or Omar and he was calling to change this persons appointment'

It went around and around and honestly, I do wonder why I bothered too!

I totally sympathise OP.
Absolutely ridiculous response from your GP' s surgery. And I've experienced similar mind blowingly unhelpful responses from my own GP's surgery: trying to get any helpful information from them when it should have been routine courtesy to give a helpful reply has been like drawing teeth.

You try, but as the old saying goes - no good deed goes unpunished!

I once had a text from a well-known bank telling me that they had received the funds for the completion of my house purchase, and would I please contact them urgently to discuss onward payment to the seller's solicitor as there was some quibble or other. They didn't supply any contact details and when I tried calling the number it had been sent from, the number was unobtainable.

Nothing to do with me whatever, but I Googled the phone number of the bank and rang them in case it was either a potentially fraudulent transaction involving someone else, a phishing attempt or genuine, and their customer had given them the wrong phone number by mistake and was frantically trying to move house. Well it was like phoning the Vatican and asking to speak to the Pope. 😂😂

I had a text with another persons name telling me about their medication. Total GDPR fail. When I rang the surgery I got a very aggressive response the receptionist couldn't seem to understand I was calling to gently tell them I'd received someone else's text and it was their error. She asked me what I wanted them to do about it!

BT once phoned me asking if I would like to go through my contract with them as they thought that perhaps I would do better on another, cheaper tariff.

The caller then said great, but first we need to go through some security questions. I pointed out that he knew who I was because he'd phoned me, but I didn't know him from Adam. He saw the funny side, and agreed that it was ridiculous (pre-GDPR days). We then spent about 10 minutes going through all the different tariffs, and choosing the one that best met my needs. Terrific I said, I'll go with that one, and he said confirmation would come by post. All sorted.

Several hours later I got another phone call from BT telling me that they couldn't process my request to change tariffs as I was on a fixed-term contract and couldn't switch tariffs until the contract expired.

An eyeroll and a facepalm with that one.

I also did that with my GP surgery a few months ago. Had a missed call on the landlines so rang them back and they said it was for DH. I messaged DH to say the surgery was trying to get hold of him and that was the end of the matter! Your surgery sound over officious!

Officious is the understatement of the century when it comes to my GP practice. The doctors and practice nurses are absolutely fantastic.

If only any of their patients could ever get to see them...

This one is for you, @MarmaladeSideDown :
https://podcasts.musixmatch.com/podcast/heavyweight-01hc4dcm58qmapjn2d79g7nbs4/episode/51-the-elliotts-01hc4dcm58qmapjn2d79g7nbs7
A great podcast episode including calls to Vatican.

By the way folks, this isn't an NHS-bashing thread - any random Jobsworth daftness that has got in the way of your day for no good reason will do.🙂

Thanks @Slavica I shall save that for later!

Phone rang- "Can I speak to Mr Rara?"
"Sorry he's at work. Can I take a message or get him to phone you back?"
"No this is a private call"
So I messaged him at work and said I think it's the Dr's surgery.
He phoned them and it was - asking him to pick up a prescription.

What a bloody palaver.

Turned up to my dds scheduled orthodontics to have her braces fitted. Receptionist could not find an appointment on the system. I know I got the appointment right as I wrote it straight on my calendar and there is no way there would be no appointment for her at all. So someone in the practice had deleted it. This is the 2nd time they've messed up in a matter of weeks. So 90 minutes wasted, taking time off school & work & paying for parking, all for nothing. "We can reschedule for January!" the receptionist quips (uh, thanks....) "or if we get a cancellation we can rebook". Yes because dd & I don't have to go to work & school....! 🤨

I had similar when we still had our LL.

Can I speak to Mr Lights?
No he's out at the moment, can I help or take a message?
No, we need to speak to Mr Lights.
OK, can I let him know who called?
No, it's a private matter.

So I said OK and put the phone down. They bloody rang back to complain I'd hung up on them! When I pointed out that they wouldn't tell me who was calling, and didn't want to leave a message, so what exactly did they expect me to do, they humphed, so I put the phone down again 😂

Another BT one...

Many years ago, with a very poorly baby on our hands, we were waiting for an urgent call back from the out-of-hours GP to find out whether we needed to see them or go to A&E. We waited a couple of hours, and we were so worried we called the OOH line again, who told us they'd tried ringing us back but the number was unobtainable. We checked they had the right phone number and they did. So we rang MIL and asked her to phone us to see if the line was working. Nothing. We rang her back and she said she couldn't get through either.

So... I rang BT.

It transpired that they had changed our phone number without telling us, because a few days previously I had contacted them to say that they were still addressing the bills to Mr & Mrs A, whereas I had divorced Mr A and was now Mrs B. Could they please change it. To my great surprise, they said that since Mr A was no longer resident, they had to change the number in case he wanted to use the original one at his new address.

Okay, I said, so what's this new phone number you've given us?

They wouldn't tell me because we were ex-directory.

Jesus Christ. How incredibly stressful.

How did you resolve this in the end?

1 - we took the baby to A&E who admitted her for observation.

2 - I rang BT to complain and told them that not only had Mr A moved out several years previously, but he lived in a different town entirely so couldn't have used the phone number even if he'd wanted to. The operator saw sense, and told me the new phone number.

It’s because of patient confidentiality - they cannot discuss any details about a call, or the reason for calling, with anyone else other than the patient.

Same with my 16 yo. Random garbled message.
Phoned and they couldn't speak to me as I wasn't the patient (even though I was paying and it was my mobile number). Mentioned that the message wasn't clear. They rang again on my mobile and again it was unintelligible- strong accent, too quiet.

They had changed the appointment - not that we could make the time anyway.
Tried to charge me and I declined.

I knew someone would be along to state the bleeding obvious, I'm just surprised it wasn't sooner.

Incidentally, I'm an optometrist and can't generally answer my phone during the working day.

Many years ago I was buying a basic sandwich at a counter in a pub, they had lots of types available and a set price for Baguette v toasted v meat and salad etc. I took a napkin somewhere along the queue to pay and the woman at the till charged me way more than I expected, the price of a toasted with chips or something like that. I said it's just a sandwich it should be X amount and she said yes but you've got a red napkin and that's what it costs when you have a red napkin. I said I took the napkin myself it wasn't put there. She could not accept that I should pay a green napkin price when I had a red one. She had to call someone and even then she looked furious like I'd tried to trick her.
I suspect the colour system was introduced for her benefit as she couldn't possibly understand the sandwich variations.

Random garbled messages are the worst, aren't they? Especially when you try and find out, and then they won't tell you.

I found a message on my landline from a GP practice calling about “ full name of child” ( I’m way past children) Withheld number but googled , called them, no reply.
Two days later another message, same child. I was getting worried in case the kid needed to see a dr urgently and luckily got through after a long wait.
Hope they contacted the right parent.

OK, I'm going to defend the GP surgery
imagine a teenager who had made an appointment because of an unwanted pg or a suspected STI, receptionist reveals to parent that they have an appointment, not even saying what for
parent will naturally then ask the teenager why they have an appointment, its a clear breach of confidentiality and could lead to harm
imagine a woman in abusive relationship who wants to get a coil fitted/implant without her husband's knowledge- again he will ask her why she has an appointment
they could perhaps have expressed it better but the fact someone has an appointment with a GP is sensitive information which should not be shared with a 3rd party