electrickery | Words on the Street

One day, during our tenure of the local pub, I received a standard letter from a well‑known national supplier of electricity. As a result of my telephone call to them consequent upon that letter, I would respectfully suggest that they reword it so that falls in line with situations occurring in the real world. Something like this, perhaps:-

Dear Customer,

Thank you for changing – without even realising you had – to Business Electricity Plan Flexirate 2. You will see this change on your next bill from us.

As a Powermen (made up name) customer with a Business Electricity Plan contract, your prices will be fixed for the length of your contract and we are pleased to be able to give details of the Business Electricity Plan you believe you have chosen all by yourself without any help from us overleaf.

Remember, if you are a Tesco Clubcard holder and you have a mere 17 minutes 55 seconds to waste, please contact us at the number below to attempt to register your Clubcard with us as part of a promotion which, as you will soon discover, is only available to private residential customers. Please try and ensure that, before ringing, you have a telephone with a speaker button so that you can get on with some work while you wait the 15 minutes 43 seconds it takes to actually answer your call. With this scenario in mind, you will, of course, appreciate that our operative will thereby have actually dealt with your actual call very quickly indeed, actually.

Do remember this call will be free but it would be of great help to obviate delays for other customers with genuine account queries if you were to ring on a separate occasion just to thank us for not charging you for ringing us – this usually only takes 12 minutes 40 seconds or thereabouts. You would – if the Clubcard facility were available to you – earn 1 point for every £1 you spend on your energy. That’s 224 points a month you will discover you will have lost just by ringing us – free!

Yours faithfully,

Elaine ******

Customer Service (oxymoron)

A while ago, our local Waitrose supermarket reopened after a major refurbishment and I began to do my shopping with the aid of electrickery. You have to have a John Lewis Partnership credit card (which a very nice lady let me sign up for when I went in the store prior to the building improvements) and you go to a bank of scanners and swipe the card down one of the slots. A screen says “Welcome, Mr Bluepants!” (marvellous!) and one of the scanner cradles lights up, showing you which one to take. When you pick it up, the display on it says “Welcome, Mr Bluepants!” (how can it get any better?)

The first time you do your electric shopping, they give you four jolly good quality bags (2 large, 2 small) into which you bung your provisions after you have scanned each item. How does that nice Mr Waitrose know you’ve scanned everything in your bags? Well, he trusts you. But sometimes, if he’s feeling a bit tetchy and suspicious, he’ll come in unexpectedly and turn your trolley over. He will repack the bags for you, though, and very nicely, I am reliably informed.

When you scan certain items, the device will emit a loud danger signal – it frightened me to death the first time it happened – but this simply means the item is subject to some sort of special offer: £1.50 each, buy 2 for £2.75 (ooh, beep! beep!); 3 for the price of 2 (ooh, beep! beep! beep!); I’m sure I can hear Mr Waitrose on his way to the bank, guffawing rather loudly.

Well, when you’ve finished cramming stuff into the lovely green bags, you go to the Quick Check Counter and complete your transaction, all without having to talk to a single soul. You can studiously ignore any of Mr Waitrose’s Little Helpers even if they ask if you need any assistance or wonder if you’re having a nice day. You just stick the John Lewis card in the slot and a message on the screen says “Well done, Mr Bluepants, you’ve finished your shopping, and Mr Waitrose says thank you and hahahahahahaha!” or something like that; then it tells you to take out that card and insert your payment card (of course, it can be the same one, if you like); it thinks for a little bit, then prints your receipt and gives your card back. Fantastic!

You almost want to stay in the shop a bit longer, and you feel as if you’ve been cheated in some way. Which of course you have been, otherwise you wouldn’t have bought 249 items for the price of 250 and loads of food which will be well past its eat by date before you’ve eaten all the other food. Still, it’s marvellous what they can do with electrickery these days, isn’t it?