Dialing 101 101

When I worked in home line faults for one of the big telcos, I had a lady ask about how to use her voice message bank. I called her number and left a message while talking to her on the initial call; this avoids the problem with the customer not letting the phone ring out.

The next step was for me to hang up from her, and then she was to call 101 and retrieve the message, and I would call her back in a couple of minutes to make sure it was working. So, I hung up from the customer, waited two or three minutes, and called her back. She had not called 101.

Me: “Okay, let’s try again. I’ll call back again in a couple of minutes.”

I called back again. She had not called 101. I re-explained the steps, got her to repeat them to me, and hung up to try again. I called her back, and once again, she had not called 101 to pick up the message I had left. I tried the same thing several times more with the exact same result. I must have sounded like I was in a cult begging her to retrieve the message I left her.

About half an hour into this call, I suggested that we could remove the message bank as it seems like it might be a bit too complicated for her. Nope, she wanted her message bank. In the end, there were forty-five minutes of my life wasted, and she still didn’t know how her message bank worked. She was going to get her son to explain it to her. I felt sorry for him.