Losing the Will

maltrab

maltrab

Administrator
Staff member
My car is due for it second year service end of December, so I called the dealer in Lincoln a few weeks back, the call diverts to a central booking dept in Nottingham, they booked the car in for me on the 19th but at that stage could not book it in as a wait appointment for 8am, I needed to call back direct on the central booking number toward the end of October, so I called them on Friday 17th on their central booking number, waited 10 minutes for them to answer and told them what I need to do is confirm the 8am appointment, the reply was "I will have to check and call you back" they did several hours later but I missed the call, they did leave a message and asked me to call back.

This I did this morning, another 10 minute wait, the chap who answered explained he would have to speak to the central booking team and call back, I asked if the number I called was the central booking team why is he not able to do this, he explain if the CBT do not answer in a timely fashion the call diverts to someone who cannot help in any way, if this is progress then feel the need to go get a horse and cart, I might just drive over to the dealer but it would not surprise me if they just direct me to the CBT number.
 
Sadly these teams are often known as overflow support or the like. Basically they're typically 3rd party companies just there to take messages or more realistically fish out the priority sales calls. As a suggestion you should tell them you're wanting to buy a new one at the same time - you'll probably likely get a call back in no time!
 
Just imagine if that happened when you dialled 999? ... "Hello, hang on I'll get a bit of paper... you need a what? Where? ... No, this is the Biggleswade Automatic Laundrette...

In the days of real telephones, if you lived in a large town when you called 999, the operator, or director enquiries, they were answered by someone in the same town. If you wanted the number of the new carpet shop at the end of the High Street you didn't need to know the name of the shop, the operator could probably see it from the telephone exchange. BT decided to introduce a system whereby if the operator centre had to close due to a local emergency, operating a key would transfer 999 to another operator centre. At the time, if all three 999 lines were busy, that was it, so it took us engineers to suggest that if there was a concurrent fourth 999 call it would overflow to the other centre anyway - and it made our jobs setting it up easier!
 
theatrically_inclined said:
Just imagine if that happened when you dialled 999? ... "Hello, hang on I'll get a bit of paper... you need a what? Where? ... No, this is the Biggleswade Automatic Laundrette...

In the days of real telephones, if you lived in a large town when you called 999, the operator, or director enquiries, they were answered by someone in the same town. If you wanted the number of the new carpet shop at the end of the High Street you didn't need to know the name of the shop, the operator could probably see it from the telephone exchange. BT decided to introduce a system whereby if the operator centre had to close due to a local emergency, operating a key would transfer 999 to another operator centre. At the time, if all three 999 lines were busy, that was it, so it took us engineers to suggest that if there was a concurrent fourth 999 call it would overflow to the other centre anyway - and it made our jobs setting it up easier!
Click to expand...
When I worked at Herts Fire Control, there were 10 manned exchanges covering the county, though 2 we just outside the county, I doubt if many of those exchanges are still manned
 
Couldn't you have booked your service online? You can at my VW dealer and it's a lot easier than having to speak to someone.
 
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