Tight with daylight time

oday we are meant to go to the park, as usual, but various chores might make this a bit challenging, plus the fact that it gets rather dark around 4PM and almost fully dark at around 5PM.

I am starting to think we might visit the park to feed the birds only on Sundays.

Winters suck. They are worse when one lives near the poles.

I know people to whom winter doesn’t mean short days. It means no days. At all. For several weeks if not months.

It looks like they will receive several “F” grades

his coming Thursday it will be two weeks or ten working days since I went to study the lack of service at a “customer service” centre that we as taxpayers are forced to pay for.

I was told it can take up to 10 working days (but typically just 5) to process, so I can wait a few more days.

I spoke to 4 ladies there. I wrote 4 articles about that:

• Manchester City Council Customer Service Issues – Part I – Denying Access to Browsers That Aren’t GAFAM or Chrom*-based
• Manchester City Council Customer Service Issues – Part II – No More Complaints by Paper, Only Digital and Without Tracking of Reports
• Manchester City Council Customer Service Issues – Part III – Understaffed Line, Not Even Queue (They Keep Saying Phone Back Later)
• Manchester City Council Customer Service Issues – Part IV – Cautious Hope for a Better Future

This week I will chase those 4 issues again, plus an additional one. As usual, I’ll bring a notebook with me but keep this impersonal (no names of staff).

I am just trying to document how awful customer services became, even where they totally lack competition (a monopoly of the government).

I will try again next month

BBC Media City Bridge – Salford (Greater Manchester)

his is the final (for now) part of a short series (see first part, second part, and third part). My intention today is to summarise my findings. A follow-up series may or may not follow.

Based on my written notes (handwritten), upon coming to Manchester City Council Customer Service I discovered that one was unable to pay with cash except via the Post Office, one cannot update one’s details without going through some online portal (which only works with few browsers and naively assumes one has an Internet connection), the phoneline ‘fallback’ was understaffed and thus altogether out of service (at the time; definitely not rush hour), the people at the Manchester City Council Customer Service could not explain anything about the site and would not receive any constructive feedback on how to improve it. On top of all this, no assurances could be made regarding basic services; they seem to lack access to any system of relevance despite 3 or 4 of them being at the desk, unoccupied and yet sedentary (they mostly chatted to one another to pass time).

There seems to be a staff misallocation problem.

When I attempted to make a polite complaint via Manchester City Council Customer Service they pushed back and tried to escalate (or intimidate). I wrote down the first names of two members of staff; I said I would not publicise these, they were not hesitant to give their names; this was not a personal issue whatsoever, but that seems to have motivated them to approach me and try to become more helpful. They didn’t want bad publicity or a word to their superior/supervisor to raise “awkward” question.

I credit one of two of them at the desk for ‘de-escalating’ and ameliorating a hostile (from them) situation. I left in good terms.

I was there around 1PM for over half an hour on October 22. I was told 5-10 working days may be needed for my input to be handled and taken into account.

Part of my input was of a technical nature, so if it’s relayed to some technical team some time by the end of this month, then maybe I should allow them a month or more to take action.

Manchester City Council Customer Service, in my opinion, can be better trained to handle opinionated people whose intent is benign.

I did not go there to argue.

My guess if that they attract some very difficult people, so they have a short fuse and presume malice.

It’s also what has happened to many cops. They handle hard situations with “rough people” – a term they might use on occasions; that makes them more impatient and suspecting (of anybody).

Deterioration of service

N the last (latest, but first) part which I published hours ago I spoke about the “root cause” of my visit to Manchester City Council Customer Service, where I very seldom go to.

In this part I shall focus on a rather dysfunctional issue reporting system. I spent a long time talking to staff about it (nearly an hour) to better understand what they were and were not capable of doing. I took some notes too (with a pen). I shall get to them at the end when I write up some conclusions (with notes at hand). I will follow up next month with another visit to see if progress was made (I’m pessimistic about it, but it’s unfair to rule out progress without actually checking).

Upon asking many questions (about 3-4 ladies at the Manchester City Council Customer Service desk) it seemed clear that everything was to be done “online” and the E-mail address they could provide – only after half an hour – was “ecitizen” alias or something like that (I assume electronic citizen). I said it would likely not be tracked (by time or code) and would therefore be a “one-way street” – not something that would provide solutions or prove fruitful a lot of the time.

To be clear, I never went to Manchester City Council asking for benefits, didn’t overuse any over-the-counter services. I’m like an ideal “customer”. I’m mostly invisible to them, I just pay my bills and sometimes use online services (e.g. to order bins). I only ever go there in person if something went very badly.

Manchester City Council Customer Service, according to itself, no longer has paper forms to issue complaints or to raise issues.

What’s remarkable about this is that two ladies at the counter attempted to find such a form, recalling that it did in fact exist. Then they said that apparently they no longer have that!

Amazing.

Does the Manchester City Council Customer Service assume everyone has a computer, has an Internet connection, and knows how to use a computer? Not only elderly people lack at least some of these things.

I will chase up with another visit next month to ask about this. There are accessibility issues at stake. I want to politely insist that this option prevails.

I explained to staff there that registering complaints online means pushing text into bots to make statistics and maybe slideshows, maybe even feeding them into large language models to deal with words in bulk, without anyone paying any attention to any of the text. If people chose their words carefully only to be fed or ingested as slop, than it is not respectful.

If done on paper, an actual person must open and read (then handle or redirect) the input.

Worse of all, they confessed to me there’s no way to get a reference ID/number for an issue reported. If that’s the case, then it’s a recipe for problems.

Since I was already there in person, with a technical bit of input at hand, why could I not speak to another person about it?

I explained to them that in some banks I reported similar issues and my input was better received/welcomed.

It would be really sad if Manchester City Council Customer Service became worse than banks.

In the next part I’ll deal with staffing and capacity issues.

To be clear, I left the place in amicable terms and it was all smiles as my envelope with input was placed in internal mail.

I recovered from what was becoming hostile and toxic (in my opinion) and what seemed like 4GS (or similar) stepping in to record the exchanges.

Why does the Council wish to make “incidents” or escalate (like police) where no intervention is needed, no bad words are used, and the solution is attainable by manners, communications, and understanding?

One lady there at the desk deserves credit for approaching me nicely and offering a partial solution, whereas her colleagues lacked these interpersonal skills.

After we ‘lost’ it in March

omorrow there’s a football match that’s hard not only because it’s an away match. This weekend will also be a daylight saving time (DST) event. It’s the worst invention made by humans. It causes many problems and solves no actual problem.

We’ll soon get an extra hour of day (or sleep).

I’ve long opposed DST.

If enough people realise how stupid DST is, we’ll get rid of it.

No simple fix

ough people – typically men – like to make noise to get noticed when they work out. They can groan, they can dump heavy equipment, they can even play loud music (many “modern” phones can do this without external boosters). Any of those things can get them attention from people nearby. It might even give them a thrill or a power (motivational) boost if people look at them while they exercise.

Many people, however, keep it to themselves. I’m one of these people. I’m very quiet in gyms.

Older people tend to want a quiet gym. I’m not that old. Yet I’ve always liked calm atmosphere.

Gyms are typically shared (it’s too expensive to maintain and repair one at home, especially with very advanced equipment). The gym is rented, at least the bits and pieces in it (a company is contracted to provide and update the contents). It wasn’t always like that, but times have changed. It’s the same with movies and music.

One last resort when gyms get loud is to get headphones and self-isolate, but that tends to interfere with intense exercise (wires everywhere, lack of spatial awareness) and isn’t necessarily good on the eardrum. A health hazard.

Perhaps some people manage to find noise-free gyms. Even the ones that ban the use of a mobile phone (out of concern for the peace of others) have no policy on groaning and loud weight-dropping.

Aim high

Last month: E.ON (E.ON Next) Tried to Force or Trick Me Into Talking to a Chatbot, Not Staff of E.ON

he other day (or night rather) I phoned a support line; the thing to note is, some companies outsourced to call centres overseas, some hired on the cheap domestically, some experiment with voice menus (that lead to the “right” person/department), and some try chatbots (which are offensive). If one tries hard enough, there’s a domestic team over the phone (upon escalation), but it is not available 24/7. If you can reach it, things will be resolved quickly and effectively.

If we value or strive for “full employment”, we’ll collectively do our best to reject the “cheapening” or support line and always demand local workers with ample knowledge of what they support.

This isn’t about nationalism, it’s about time savings for customers. Subpart support leads to time-wasting and frustration.