MOBILE PHONES: An insight into what 02 stands for

Shortly before coming out here to Greece and Italy, I dumped Vodafone and went with 02. I also dumped contract phoning in favour of pay as you go, because 02 told me it’d be cheaper.

Let me tell you what I now think 02 stands for: zero ethics, and number of brain cells present in the company.

Their PAYG system isn’t cheaper, it’s horrendously more expensive. I’m sure there is a cheaper tariff they were referring to, but why should I find out about it the hard way? You see, the bean-counters think this is smart business, because they think business consists entirely of the numbers. This is why they are bean-counters, not real live business persons who can find their asses in the dark.

These folks are third on the bonfire after the lawyers and the geeks.

That’s the zero-ethics score verified, now for the two brain-cells thing. I signed in using the email address and password these jokers say you shouldn’t ever write down (as if everyone on the planet was Memory Man incarnate) and guess what, 02 didn’t like the password. But rather than saying “Give is your email address and we’ll send you a new one”, they said “Give us your phone number and we’ll send you a code“.

Did you notice the code concept sliding quietly in from left-field there? But anyway, I gave them my phone number and I got a code….which I then duly put in the box as required, and a panel came up saying “We don’t recognise you as an 02 number, please try again”.

Then how and why the f**k did you send me the code, Dog-breath? And as for that try-again sh*t, who are you, f**king Ben Bernanke?

So I went back to the home page and went to their live web-chat, which to be honest wasn’t showing much sign of life. “We’ll be with you soon” said another panel, but this was obviously ‘soon’ in the Buddhist sense of Eternal Now.

“Your soon is far into a future I don’t comprehend” I typed, and a cute reply came up suggesting “Hold that thought”. I wrote a 50,000 word novel and then came back to the webchat, which by this time had seven Hold that thoughts trawling vertically down the page. And at that moment, Rama came on the line to type “Hi, how can I help?”

It took all my reserves of willpower not to give him the Steve Martin car-hire speech from Trains, Planes and Automobiles. Instead, I typed a couple of sentences in – frankly, I could’ve been Beelzebub’s multi-talented cat for all he knew – but nevertheless he gave me a link to click. And lo, I topped up.

Except that the thing I started out trying to get – a new password – I still don’t have, so this same pavane will take place next time: because by the time I went all the way through my card details again, Rama had gone away.

So yes, I think the two brain-cells judgement is fair to the point of being generous.

Look Sloggers, I’m not a Trade Union create-useless-jobs freak, OK? But all the profits from automating customer service alongside moving the call centre to Uzbeckhistan are going to the mad 7%, while increasing our levels of unemployment and welfare costs…when we could be empowering human beings to take decisions, thus (a) hugely increasing their self-esteem following proper training, and (b) reducing homicidal tendencies among millions of customers.

Far from being merely a self-indulgent moan, this is yet another plea for cultural sanity to triumph over tiny-minority undeserved enrichment. Everything that’s wrong with shareholder-centric neoliberal globalist bollocks is encapsulated within this case history.