Can'terbury Tales
Just before Christmas last, some over-refreshed no-mark troglodyte and his willing moll decided that nothing would polish off their evening quite like a Herman Munsteresque pas de deux on the bonnet, roof and wing mirror of my beloved Alfa. The card said, phone this number. I get a broker and a reference number (best you start counting). My call is then passed to the insurer and I was given a reference number. On calling back my details had been ‘mislaid’ and I was given a reference number. I was passed on to the underwriter, and I was given a reference number.
The underwriter finally passed me onto an engineer at a garage. He didn’t give me a reference number. Now there was I thinking my reference number haul was of the type of magnitude that would give Roy Castle (RIP) wood, but no more.
Cos’ whilst the broker, insurer and underwriter completely dicked about, losing themselves and me in a morass of protocol and data process bellendary, (9 bleeding weeks of it) it was down to the man with the spanner to offer up the most enlightening and blatantly obvious insight. ‘Nah, it’s f**ked mate. Going nowhere. Write off’.
The underwriter and the insurer blamed each other for further delays. The insurer customer service operation then demonstrated a ‘gift’ for double-talk and double-standards in a language that I immediately identified as double b******s. It took a bloke with a total control of a useful tool (a real tool) to be the first ‘to put me in the picture’. A place where three insurance trough eaters, three telephone numbers, five reference numbers, and a legion of happy, smiley, helpy, customer servicey, all my best matey, computer says ‘No’ peoplely only acting when the normally understanding and notoriously mild tempered moi fired a fanged ferret at them. Here I am writing more cosy TCF copy and thinking - 'not a cat in hell's chance fellas!' Who are these villains? Well that would be telling tales.
