Anticant has bought a new car.
He didn’t intend, or want, to buy a new car.
But his old car decided not to be roadworthy any longer. Despite having only just over 10,000 miles on the clock, its automatic transmission gearbox gave up the ghost and died.
So Anticant decided to splash out a bit and chose an almost-new Honda Jazz SE. Great car according to most reviews, and very driver-friendly on a test drive.
That was on Tuesday. The dealers promised delivery on Friday [today].
Yesterday, they phoned to say the car was all ready, and they could bring it straightaway. Oh, goody.
But there was one snag. They couldn’t obtain the second signature needed for the cheque to purchase the free six-month road tax until tomorrow [i.e. today]. Promised faithfully the car would be with me by mid-morning.
This morning, another phone call. Another snag. They hadn’t received the cover note for the seven-day complimentary insurance cover that was part of the deal. And the insurers couldn’t guarantee producing it today, because their system had been “down” yesterday and there was a backlog. Heard that before somewhere?
So Anticant phoned the insurers and read the Riot Act about being a disabled driver who needed the car for his weekend shopping. Long hold-on to raucous music while the person at the other end “spoke to his manager”.
Eventually, he came back and said the cover note should be with the dealers “within a couple of hours”.
Why a couple of hours? All they have to do is to send an email or a fax, and it is presumably standard procedure. But no.
And then, of course, the dealer said “Oh dear, I have another appointment later this afternoon, and may not be able to bring it today if I don’t get the cover note quickly”.
So there the matter rests. But Anticant doesn’t. He is restless and irritable. He itches to kick butt.
Why, oh why, is nothing straightforward and efficient these days? Is it part of the culture, or what?
You tell me.
6 comments:
It should have been taught in schools many years ago but it was not.
Anyway :-
Capitalism itself is so full of contradictions that no attempt at efficiency is possible unless one is to be fooled at every turn.
It is now more than three hours since the cover note was promised "within two hours", and needless to say it has still not reached the dealers.
So it looks as if I may well not get the car until Monday....
BTW, Anonymous, it isn't the "ism" that's at fault - it's the people!
Don'y fret Anti
I have posted you the reference you wanted on me site.
Be kind to Antibatman I will.
http://sociologybloglines.blogspot.com/
Zo-zo has a view on 'going down' it is said.
Nae problems.
You need a fixer.
IS What it is is (as they say in hither Nebraskan-American), under complex late-historical conditions, of lots of tasty state liberallist-global corporate 'interface' & hyper-regulation, the opportunities for Complete Shits to hide out and play Whack-Doodle with their grannies whilst (laughingly) 'at work' is universal -- NOBODY is responsible, nobody CAN be (definitively) fired, and everybody 'out-sources' their jammiest bastards to SOMEBODY ELSE....
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