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?

If though the receptionist does do as you suggest and your dh complains - she will be in trouble with her superiors. Its a case of you knowing the doctors or solicitors called etc and your dh not wanting you to know he has an appointment with them etc.

When you go through the GDPR training, its really clear not to give out any information and why - so why wold you suggest she should go against the training, against the procedures and put herself in a difficult position regarding her job?

Why not just suggest "if you have his mobile number give it a ring?

Taking a client out on the bus - she's in a wheelchair. The policy of the bus company is supposed to be that they need to put the ramp down for access. Usually they lower the bus and we can safely push it straight on. Had this awful driver and she insisted she had to put the ramp down except the bus was level to the pavement and it stuck up at the end. She insisted we had to use it and put her foot on it to try and make it flat..... Argued with her that it was LESS safe to do this but she had a jobsworth bee in her bonnet about it. Totally stupid.

Why not just suggest "if you have his mobile number give it a ring

It’s exactly what the OP wanted to do!!! But the receptionist didn’t let her talk, probably assuming she was going to insist to ‘know something she shouldn’t’

@chaosmaker i had one telling me that I should just balance on my back wheels to go in the bus (not the U.K.) despite there being a ramp.
I use an electric wheelchair…..

My son received a gas bill and several reminders for £500. His house did not have gas. He lived at no. 5. 5A next door had gas. However, when their gas contract was set up, someone must have put 5 instead of 5A. 5A was a tenanted property and not interested in paying their bills.

My son was trying to get a mortgage and had this unpaid debt that was not his. the gas company would not talk to us because we said we did not have gas and therefore were not the holders of the contract. The name on the bill was "owner/occupier" - and everyone insisted it was nothing to do with them.

We gave the bills to the house next door and they kept giving them back to us - we explained to them that we don't have gas. We asked if they had ever received a gas bill - no - they hadn't. Contacted Martin Lewis in case he could help - nothing.

Managed finally to get a response to the 100th email we sent to the company (they refused to communicate on the phone) - the response said they could not talk to us because we had the wrong email address associated with the contract.

We then started to get debt collector letters - the amount was now well over £1k, and they actually were interested to assist. However, in order for them to move forward, we had to prove we paid for our gas with another supplier. As we didn't have gas, we could not send the proof. Tried again a week later with the debt collection agency, and they said leave it with them. And we never heard another thing from either them or the gas company. Now moved house. Have gas supply (with a different company)

Yes of course. But they can say WHO they’re calling for, as they will say this when the phone is answered anyway. If it’s the surgery’s policy not to confirm to anyone else that it’s the surgery calling, they should set their number to private when calling landlines.

Confidentiality, instant dismissal to speak to someone else about a partners health. If you had answered she would have told you get husband to phone her for information

I had bizarre conversations with British Gas and my bank a few years ago where they called me and asked me to provide my date of birth and address to confirm my identity. I’d say I don’t give that sort of information out to strangers over the phone and ask what it’s regarding. The caller would insist she could only talk to me if I confirmed my identity so I would point out that she’d called me and I had no idea who she was so she could hardly expect me to give out personal details to her. The caller would be a bit flummoxed, eventually deciding they’d just have to write to me instead.

When I get the letters it’s clear they were just bloody marketing calls.

Appalling treatment - what would they have done if your chair had toppled? They are so heavy.

This is NOT what the thread is about, but just in case the info helps, here in Scotland there is a form you can sign at your GPs to give all practice staff permission to contact another named adult on your behalf. My DH and I have done that so we can - at the very least - take messages for each other.
I don't know whether the same form exists in other places?

Ds gets a private bus to school, we pay a monthly amount and they are provided with a monthly ticket, a different colour code for each month. The ticket is paper, similar to a cloakroom ticket. They also allocate a seat to each child for the whole year and monitor this, so only John P is allowed sit on seat 12, for example. All makes sense.

Last year on the second day of term two boys who had just started secondary school didn't bring their ticket as they thought it was just for the day. The bus driver refused to let them on, despite them giving their names and there being a seat allocated to them. The bus driver simply drove away and left them. They had to walk about 40 mins to school through country roads. The bus company's response was no ticket no entry. Ffs

Another one.. a few years ago I contacted a travel agent with a specific question about a resort. They did not reply and I sent a reminder. I then got bombarded with marketing emails, one a week at least. I tried again and again to block this but to no avail. I also sent a reminder to the query. I had to contact them numerous times via telephone and other emails to get the marketing stuff stopped. They never answered my query, ever despite reminders. I booked with another company and haven't done business with them since nor will I ever again.

I have given up answering any unknown numbers. I don't understand why the onus is on me to pick up to an anonymous caller when there are so many spam and scam calls these days. Surely companies know this and should be writing a letter or email or at the very least having the company name on their numbers? I'm apparently being chased for an amount under £50 from my internet provider, despite there being no record of this on my account, via a solicitor and debt collection agency that keeps texting me. The amount is not the same as any bill I have ever had, and as it doesn't show on my account I am ignoring it. If they want to instruct a solicitor and pay them £200ph to reclaim under £50 rather than send me an actual paper invoice that is on them.

You should have said, "Oh hang on a minute, I hear the door. It's my husband returning from a business meeting, i'll just go and get him!", them stamped around the room loudly and returned with a really low gruff voice "Allo, this is Mr Marmalade her, Mrs Marmalade s husband, now what can I do you for? I believe you rang?".

Oh yes. I once received someone else's McDonalds via Just Eat and took it in mistakenly thinking DS had ordered it. His confused face soon told me otherwise, so I tried contacting to let them know there was a disappointed and hungry customer still out there somewhere.

"Can I have the order number please"?
"There's no order number on the paperwork"
"Sorry we can't do anything without the order number"
"How can I give you the order number when I didn't order the food?"
"Sorry there's nothing we can do"
"Can't you check your outstanding orders?"
"Not without the order number"

DS and I ate the food.

Ooooh, another thing that gets on my wick/makes me roll my eyes....

Surveys!

I have an Argos card, and roughly 2-3 times a year they ask me to do a bloody 'customer service' survey. It takes about 40 minutes (minimum.) Question after question after question, on and on and on. You get like 30 questions, and question 1 (for example) asks 'how easy did you find the website to access today?' A) Very easy. B) Quite easy. C) Neither easy nor hard. D) Quite hard. E) Very hard. Then when you pick say 'C' they ask 'why did you give this answer,' then give another 7 or 8 choices. (Pick any 3' they say.) So you pick 3, and they say 'why did you pick these choices, tell us... Then there is a blank field for you to type into. You put a reason/several reasons, then they say 'just a few more words, please tell us in no less than 150 words.' (Sometimes it's 200 or 250 words!) And you're still only on question 1 FFS!

Royal Mail are the same. I have had 3 packages delivered by them this past week, and I got a survey to fill in online yesterday. I started answering the questions, and it was similar... 'why did you put this answer, please give your reasons la la la...' I answered around 5 or 6 questions (took me about 4 or 5 minutes,) and I noticed a grey bar at the top of the page... It had a little bit of dark grey at the start, and it said 8% complete. I thought LOL fuck off. Judging by that there was about 60 questions, and will take about three quarters to an hour of an hour to complete. So I just shut the page down.

I have had similar 'survey requests' from Paypal, Amazon, Ebay, Barclays Bank, and several parcel delivery companies, to name but a few ... Up to 4 or 5 years ago, a survey would take maybe 5-8 minutes and would have 20-25 fairly straightforward questions. Now, it's a chore, and take AGES, with all the questions, and all the sub questions, and the 'why did you pick this choice' bollocks, with the 'tell us in no less than 250 words' crap! Some take 45 minutes to an hour! If they want me to do it, they can pay me £20 an hour to do it.

Oh one last thing, I.F.F. research sent me a letter in the post the other week with a link to a survey that was asking about age, job, income, any disabilities, what type of house we live in, how many children we have, how many pets we have, what kind of car we have, what shops we go to, how much we spend in each, where we go on holiday, how often we go abroad blah blah blah. Would have taken an hour and a half to fill in (they said it takes roughly this long.) They said 'this information is essential. It's needed so we can monitor consumerism' (or some bollocks like that!)

Into the bin it went. I ripped it up, said 'LOL fuck off!' and binned it! Nosey, intrusive survey that they expected me to spend an hour and a half doing - for free.

It's true they can't tell you why they were calling for someone else. Just say someone told a rapist about their victim's upcoming abortion? Or about a diagnosis of HIV? Medical stuff is personal.

Just as well really. You might be in the audience and then where would we be? I'd have wasted my time, and you'd have wasted your money.
😎

Now that retort is funny.

You need to your GP this next time you get an appointment with them. They need to be made aware of this. They can't do anything if they don't know what is going on.

They couldn't have just given you your old number back? I doubt it would have been re-issued in that short time.

You REALLY need to send an email to the GP directly and tell them this, or make an appointment and outline this to the doctor in the appointment. They have the right to know their receptionist is unprofessional and not doing their job properly which could seriously affect a patient.

@selffellatingouroborosofhate
You know what satire is and you clearly understood what OP meant by funny bone but chose to use autistic as an excuse for being obtuse, let's not do that. Before you leap in with further excuses, I am autistic.

Many years ago, my mother died unexpectedly.
I was executor. Had sent death certificates to all the banks, which they'd acknowledged. Had probate as well, also sent out & acknowledged. So I tried calling one particular bank to close the account.

Went through everything, yes, they can see the death certificate etc.
"I'd like to close the account"
"No, sorry, only the account holder can do that"
"... She's dead, that's going to be difficult"
"Sorry, nothing I can do, only the account holder can close it, she needs to call"

Ok, not going to get anywhere with that level of stupid, so ended the call, phoned the bank back. No idea if same person, assume probably not.

This time, pretended to be my mother. Went through the whole rigmarole. (No-one clocked the death certificate on file, apparently) Yes, they'd be very happy to close the account for me. What was the reason I wanted to close it? "I'm dead" "Yes, certainly madam, just a moment..."

I really only did it to illustrate the level of stupid in the response to the first call, but apparently that level of stupid (or mindless process following) was common across all the banks employees....
Anyway, they closed the account, so mission accomplished, but FFS...!

Why mention it to a GP? Look up the surgery's complaints procedure and use that instead. The GP doesn't deal with admin or staff problems.

However the Receptionist wasn't wrong in this case. Even giving out information to someone about someone else's test results eg "yes the results are back" without saying if they are ok or not is still a breach of patient confidentiality.