The concept of "service" these days

Belgian economy minister Van Quickenborne wants to counter the flood of complaints about the country's telecom operators. He proposes a new law setting "two and a half minutes" as the maximum time before you get a "human person" on the hotlines. If the operators would be too busy, the customer can hang up, and should be called back within 24 hours.

Government owned Belgacom, the largest Belgian telecom operator, called this proposal totally unrealistic. There are already 1,400 people working at the Belgacom's call centre.
Maybe it's the Belgian way to reduce the unemployment rate without efforts to improve the core service: just put more people in the complaints department. ;-)

This morning, I spent 18 minutes on hold, when I wanted to verify why €300 of service cheques we ordered three weeks ago, had not arrived. On December 3rd, we got an email confirmation the cheques would arrive within 3 working days. But until today, nothing. No response on Email neither.
Eighteen minutes of hold time later, I was informed that "We are very sorry, but there is a general delay in the delivery of service cheques. Everybody has the same problem. You will have to wait. Probably you will get the cheques this week." Punto.
So what right of appeal does one have? Nothing. This service has no competition. All I can do, is whine about it on my blog. :-))

The nuissances of a comfortable life. I wonder how Mats is doing in Bor, South Sudan. And Jalal in Islamabad. I hope they are safe.

Picture courtesy The Tribune News