To ask for your “computer says no” moments?

[Retpark101]

Light hearted, I’m talking about times when in a shop/supermarket/transport/anything else really, you’ve been “not allowed” or told “can’t do that sorry” when it’s something really tedious or silly. My title (for those who don’t know) refers to Little Britain’s character of a woman behind a computer who just say no to every request made of her.

Anyway I’ll share mine from this morning that gave me the idea.

In Waitrose cafe as they’ve refurbished it and it looks lovely. I’m with DD who is 2. We are looking at the kids snacks and sandwiches but DD isn’t hungry and there’s only ham or egg mayo sandwiches for kids so she isn’t interested. However she would like a banana and an innocent smoothie pouch so I pick both up and go to the counter to pay.

The woman says “sorry but the smoothie isn’t included in the kids meal deal” I say it’s fine I’ll buy it separately. She says “you also can’t have to banana on its own, you have to buy a sandwich and a kids drink as well” (which is just 2 flavours of fruit shoot)

I say I don’t mind paying extra if I can just have the banana, DD doesn’t want a sandwich or a fruit shoot. Can I not just have the banana separately? “No sorry you HAVE to buy it with the kids meal deal”

So I just got my coffee and DDs smoothie and went to get a pack of bananas from Waitrose itself then DD ate one in the cafe.

Total first world problem I know but FFS just let me buy a pissing banana on its own from the cafe without the sandwich and fruit shoot?

Tell me your stories

My father died recently. We telephoned Vodaphone to ask them to close my father's account and cancel any further payments. "That's ok. We just need to speak to the account holder please?"

When my BIL died we had the same problem with Vodafone. My MIL initially phoned them to cancel the account and was forced to repeatedly tell them that her son couldn't come to the phone because he was dead. It broke her.

DH ended up phoning and got the same treatment, but managed to persist for over an hour before he was transferred to someone normal who told him what he need to do the close the account.

We bought our house 20 odd years ago, and the owners had given it a housename (on the deeds it's no 7, our road). So when we moved in, we gave everyone this address. Only when we went into our Doctors, they couldn't find any record of it, and said they only had No 6 or No 8 on the system, which were we?! We said neither, and this went backwards and forwards until in the end we said No 8 as there is no No 8 on the road, we're the last house. Same with Royal Mail - so again we adopted No 8 so we could get our mail! The electoral roll was a bloody nightmare, as they only had the housename. Over the years, we thought it was odd that whenever we applied for phone contracts, credit cards etc we always got declined and our credit scores were really low. It wasn't until a few years ago that I got pissed off with it, and asked one company why we kept being turned down. They said we weren't on the electoral roll and had no financial history!! It's been an absolute nightmare and we still haven't sorted it.

It's a good job we've never needed to borrow money

Will I still have to go online to pay £0 to tax it?

Yes, it’s apparently so they can ensure the car hasn’t changed hands and we’re still the registered keepers of our zero tax cars.

kingsassassin I had the same problem with my cat. I did the insurance company to pay out eventually but it took a lot of persistence and appeals to common sense.

We got married at a hotel that was part of a small chain. When we checked in the day before the wedding, our account flashed up on their system as "Bride and groom" and they congratulated us - nice touch. We then had a mini moon at another of the hotels in the chain and the same thing happened - fair enough. Then again when we stayed at another hotel, a year or so later. We explained that actually, we were no longer newlyweds, and they said they'd update the system. And we've had the same conversation at every check-in since (wedding was 7 years ago now)!

My road tax is zero. Will I still have to go online to pay £0 to tax it? Do I have to put my card details in? It's not due until August.

You just need to go online and update it. I’m guessing it’s a way of checking ownership, insurance and MOT.

A lot of criticism of companies dealing badly with bereavement. The key is to ask for their bereavement department, they usually have one.

The key is to ask for their bereavement department, they usually have one.
That's helpful, but surely a better key would be for companies to just not be so wank at it?

I wasn't allowed to open up a new business in France. The reason was because I had to supply the town of my birth with two stipulations:

• It had to be the name of the town as it is currently known
• It had to match the town on my birth certificate

Now, the town where I was born has changed its name. I tried supplying the name as it appears on my BC. Response: No, this town does not exist. I then supplied the current name. Response: no, that does not match what it says on your BC.

No amount of reasoning would persuade them. In fact they got extremely rude, yelled and slammed the phone down on me.

It was eventually sorted the time-honoured Parisian way: get a male French friend to shout at them. Soon sorted! But how annoying to need to bring out the big guns over such a silly thing.

Competition from other providers has certainly gingered BT up - a bit.
It really hasn't.

We went into our bank to ask for a large ish loan. After an hour the smug lady told us no, we couldn't afford it. (we could). Went home and applied online with the same bank and were approved instantly, money was in the account the day after. So, the computer actually said yes, but smug nosey woman said no!

@Spoonbender, @Ringsender2 - the issue I mentioned about the funeral directors bill - I did speak to the bereavement dept - they were bloody useless. Said that the bill hadn't been sent to them (1. No it was handed in at a branch and 2. There hadn't been any instruction to do so anyway) and so they wouldn't /couldn't / shouldn't pay it.

A lot of criticism of companies dealing badly with bereavement. The key is to ask for their bereavement department, they usually have one.
Why don't call centre staff prompt for it when you mention that "x has died"?

“I have also volunteered to put a complete strangers laptop in my underweight bag” THAT is seriously stupid! A laptop is the perfect disguise for an explosive or to conceal other weapons or drugs or any number of other illegal items! At the very least you're risking a criminal conviction doing this with potentially a length prison sentence.

Interesting re counties. I’ve lived all over Uk inc London at one point and always had a county as my official address on tenancy docs and council tax paperwork. Several of the places mentioned as being now unitary authorities are places I’ve lived! How confusing!

Where I live now the county has had various names over the years what’s bonkers is the different names for the same county often appear on drop downs. I’ve even had customer service people argue with me that I’m wrong what the county is called now even though that’s the name of the county council.

“That's helpful, but surely a better key would be for companies to just not be so wank at it?l exactly! Common sense that if the customer service agent is told account holder is DEAD they then follow the protocols for deceased account holders for that company! Not stupidly insist on dealing with a deceased person!!

“Competition from other providers has certainly gingered BT up - a bit.
It really hasn't.”
I would say I agree except it’s not entirely accurate because BT STILL have a monopoly in terms of they still own all traditional phone lines! The only ones they don’t are cables owned by virgin.

I’ve dealt with BT for MANY years both as a residential and a business customer within the telecom industry and they have always been an arrogant, inflexible, monotonous, intractable, extortionate, slow, incompetent bloody nightmare of an organisation/company to deal with! (Yes I’m old enough to have had to deal with them before they were privatised too plus my parents had nightmares with them then. Dad was army so frequent house moves and connecting the phone was always the thing that took the longest!). It’s the one industry that largely did benefit customers by privatisation but mainly because they are so shit!

They’re still using ancient equipment with no concrete plans to upgrade (I happen to have a friend that works for openreach and even he would agree with all this!) which is LITERALLY in some cases rotting away and not being replaced until many customers kick off.

They really should have their monopoly taken off them, fully privatise the system or nationalise it but have competent people running it!

My (well enough off!) Parents were buying a house but due to their ages they couldnt get the mortgage amount needed unless they put about £2k more deposit down so they asked me if they could borrow £2k. I went into the bank to ask to withdraw it, and bank say it would be easier and quicker to just get a loan for the amount and as my parents ts could pay it back within a few weeks, I'd not be charged anything. I said okay and an appointment was made for me to go in and get this loan. Only at the appointment I was advised they dont give loans for reasons like mine.

So I said okay and went to the counter again as originally planned, asked to withdraw £2k. Bloke told me to lie heavily implied I should have lied in the meeting. Another meeting arranged only by the time it came about, my parents had managed to source the money from somewhere else I forget where. Annoying thing was, for some 6 months afterwards I was bombarded with phone calls from my bank and then other banks, asking was I still considering a loan. I never wanted a bliddy loan in the frigging first place!

I have also volunteered to put a complete strangers laptop in my underweight bag” THAT is seriously stupid! A laptop is the perfect disguise for an explosive or to conceal other weapons or drugs or any number of other illegal items! At the very least you're risking a criminal conviction doing this with potentially a length prison sentence

Presumably this was after security and the laptop owner was a passenger on the same flight. It doesn’t seem particularly stupid to me.

All the talk of counties has reminded me of when I moved to the south coast 20 years ago. I had to put former address on lots of things and the number of people who had never heard of my previous county was amazing.
-Liverpool is in Lancashire isn't it?
-Not since before I was born, it's in Merseyside
-Are you sure, is that part of Lancashire?
-No, definitely a county all by itself
One person was particulary insistent, so I challenged them to name five counties in the North of England. They scored one for Lancashire, I thought of giving them half a point for Yorkshire but was too annoyed

All the talk of counties has reminded me of when I moved to the south coast 20 years ago. I had to put former address on lots of things and the number of people who had never heard of my previous county was amazing.
-Liverpool is in Lancashire isn't it?
-Not since before I was born, it's in Merseyside
-Are you sure, is that part of Lancashire?
-No, definitely a county all by itself
One person was particulary insistent, so I challenged them to name five counties in the North of England. They scored one for Lancashire, I thought of giving them half a point for Yorkshire but was too annoyed

@Alsohuman you are the voice of reason. I had that laptop in the front sleeve of my carry on bag from the time it took to get from the front of the boarding queue to the plane steps, a few minutes. Carrying other people's things is risky I agree but it's a managed risk. It's like saying giving a lift to a stranger runs a risk of being instantly killed. If you pick up a guy that looks like Freddy Krueger....more full you. My stranger was a younger woman, looked exactly like a student panicking at the end of the queue that she was going to get whacked with the £40 Ryanair baggage tax. And it turned out that's exactly what she was. And together we beat the system!

@Alsohuman you are the voice of reason. I had that laptop in the front sleeve of my carry on bag from the time it took to get from the front of the boarding queue to the plane steps, a few minutes. Carrying other people's things is risky I agree but it's a managed risk. It's like saying giving a lift to a stranger runs a risk of being instantly killed. If you pick up a guy that looks like Freddy Krueger....more full you. My stranger was a younger woman, looked exactly like a student panicking at the end of the queue that she was going to get whacked with the £40 Ryanair baggage tax. And it turned out that's exactly what she was. And together we beat the system!

I have an eon one. I got a gas bill for a month for £120. In the summer. In a heatwave. I don’t think we had even used the gas cooker because we had been eating salads and things.

I checked the bill, and they had us down as having a normal gas meter, ours was smart. They had taken the reading and ‘converted’ it when there was no need to. I phoned up and explained, they told me I didn’t have a smart meter, and the reason my bill was so high must be because I’d left the heating on (the outside temp was hitting high 20s at the time).

I phoned several times (I kept getting angry looking red overdue bill reminders) and each time they told me I was wrong, I had a normal meter, I must have used that much gas, and I needed to pay my bill.

I even tried telling them I hadn’t, therefore I must have a leak and could they send someone out to look?

Eventually I phoned the ‘need help paying your bill’ line, got a sympathetic call handler and promptly burst into tears. They sent a technician out to look at the meter, he confirmed it was a smart meter and they hadn’t updated their system...

After all this was sorted, I wanted to change tariffs as I was on the standard (most expensive) tariff. As I was an existing customer, they had my estimated usage details and used those to find the cheapest tariff for me. Except of course, the estimated usage was based on the wrong meter readings. I spoke to eon, explained the situation and asked if I could manually input my figures. No because the computer ones are more accurate. So I asked if they could do me an estimate the same way as they do for new customers. No because you’re not a new customer. At that point I closed the account and went elsewhere!

York was a city and a county for centuries and so was Bristol, and I lived in both one time and another and found that a lot of businesses got confused when you put York or Bristol for Town and then the same name for County in their forms. I think there were a couple of other city-and-county places but I didn't ever live in them so I can't remember what they were.

@DillBaby same thing happened to me too! They eventually agreed to give me the meal and a frozen drink for the same price as the meal!

“My stranger was a younger woman, looked exactly like a student” do you really think people up to no good “look guilty” ?

Would you have carried these peoples laptop or other luggage through?

You’re missing the point @Graphista. The laptop had gone through security and its owner retrieved it before boarding the plane.