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The most baffling thing here is how the hell did the author get the organisation to respond, on topic, multiple times? In my experience conversing with various
by ZoomZoomZoom 2y ago
The most baffling thing here is how the hell did the author get the organisation to respond, on topic, multiple times? In my experience conversing with various entities that are supposed to provide customer support, absolutely anything outside of an extremely narrow set of vetted topics with prepared answers and especially anything technical gets ignored and receives an irrelevant response at best.
- anigbrowl 2y agoIt's from 2006, before organizations realized that there were lots of trolls willing to dedicate themselves to wasting other people's time over bullshit.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
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- tailspin2019 2y ago…which is somewhat ironic in the context of TV Licensing which trolls the British public en masse with its relentless and unnecessarily aggressive communications.
- BobaFloutist 2y agoYou guys could decide to fund the BBC in the sane, default way of taxing everyone instead of the asinine approach of trying to tie it to usage at any time.
- mkl 2y agoMight be to do with when this happened, 2006-2007. He did have trouble getting them to respond on topic though.
- cal85 2y agoOn-topic? Every reply seemed evasive to me. (Regarding how he got them to reply at all, this is required by law of public authorities.)
- ryandrake 2y agoHilarious that every time, they responded in a way that was technically on-topic, but totally ignoring the actual questions being asked. Like someone found one word in OP's question, then mindlessly recited a random form response associated with that word.
- bigiain 2y agoA Small Language Model...
- melagonster 2y agoIf this happened today, I'll bet there is a LLM.
- ozzmotik 2y agothis is, legitimately and without any exaggeration whatsoever, almost exactly how nearly everyone I speak to IRL as a homeless individual interacts with me. There are a few here and there that absolutely do make an attempt to have real discourse and actually discuss in context, but by an overwhelming majority, most of them just take the (to borrow from a response) SLM approach. life is exhausting sometimes
- kulahan 2y agoI assume they’re not really paying attention to you, like if you were a child vying for attention. You’re not likely to run into many salient points speaking to someone who isn’t tracking the basic things an adult should do.
- dredmorbius 2y agoNot an uncommon experience on, say, HN, to draw an arbitrary example.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- masfuerte 2y agoI saw another example the other day of how things used to work. If you wrote to the UK government in the 1980s to ask (or complain) about their policy towards apartheid South Africa you received a personal reply addressing your points in the context of the government's policy [1]. Presumably, letters to other departments were handled similarly. I've corresponded with the civil service a few times recently and the service now is shite. [1]: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/10/who-are-the-terrorists/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/10/who-are-the-...
- throwup238 2y agoVote Tory 2029! They’ll fix it this time around, they promises.
- ClassyJacket 2y agoBecause it's government. People in government jobs often sit around half the day doing nothing because they have so much spare time. Case in point: me, right now.
- rurban 2y agoDon't they need to rearrange their Spotify lists?
- csomar 2y agoI am assuming because the BBC is a government organization? I am not sure about the UK but where I come from the government is legally required to answer your request. They have to. Doesn't mean they'll answer your question but they'll answer something. (plus they have to confirm reception/delivery and stuff like that)
- manarth 2y agoThe BBC is independent, and funded by the TV licence. The TV licence scheme is _administered_ by Capita on behalf of the BBC. Those responses are coming from Capita.
- billpg 2y agoExcept its complicated. The licence fee is effectively a tax, with criminal consequences for non-payment.
- mike_hearn 2y agoThe website has a page where it disagrees with that belief, and argues that TVL and the BBC are in fact the same organization: http://www.bbctvlicence.com/TVL-BBC%20hiding%20of%20identities.htm http://www.bbctvlicence.com/TVL-BBC%20hiding%20of%20identiti...
- manarth 2y agoWhere I said that the BBC were independent, I was responding to the parent thread which said the BBC are a Government organisation. The BBC are independent of the UK government. The BBC are responsible for TV licencing, and they delegate (outsource) that activity to Capita. The day-to-day interactions, such as the emails from the website, are with Capita's support service, acting on instructions from the BBC.
- mike_hearn 2y agoThe BBC aren't really independent of the government. They like to claim this and mostly get away with it, because British governments tend to be lenient with them and don't interfere. But they depend on taxes for the bulk of their income, their existence is defined by law and the government appoints the person who runs it. A change of government could completely change the BBC tomorrow and there'd be nothing anyone working there could do about it.
- manarth 2y agoTV licencing in the UK is administered by Capita. Their contract is unlikely to allow queries to be ignored, and the people receiving the queries are likely to have targets to resolve "tickets" (queries) within a particular time / to a particular satisfaction. If the query doesn't tick a particular easy-to-answer box, they'll use the best form answer available in order to "resolve" the ticket and meet their targets.
- BobaFloutist 2y agoThese are dated 2006-2007. Customer support was still a nominal value at the time.