The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #149002   Message #3465090
Posted By: gnomad
12-Jan-13 - 03:30 PM
Thread Name: BS: We need a Silent Order Of ...
Subject: RE: BS: We need a Silent Order Of ...
Eliza yes, I too dislike the first name thing, and the sell you something (anything!) attitude that goes with call centres. One thing to do is to make your preference for more formal address clear (same with healthcare staff imo) if they cannot comply it might be the issue that decides where to take your business.

After my time in high street banking I did a few years for a different firm, call centre based, and one day received one of those "Just tell us how much you want up to £xxx and it's yours" letters from my employers (we were required to have an account for receipt of salary). I had had recent and extensive experience of dealing with over-extended borrowers, and the misery they can undergo. I knew instantly that were I to borrow the sum indicated I would be well over-committed, despite having rather better resources than my employers knew.
I suggested to the lending people that this didn't fit the mantra of "responsible lending" that they were pushing to the call-centre staff, and produced figures based on the information they held to demonstrate my point. They could offer no decent counter argument, and seemed put off by meeting opposition in person, especially in front of a large-ish department. Funny, but no-one ever suggested I should move to the lending section, and when my entire department later got phased out I was glad to get out of banking altogether. It was no longer the profession I had joined some 33 years earlier. My current work may involve scraping muck off the bottom of a boat (among other activities) but I feel cleaner.