Telephone Marketing

Background:

I decided I needed a land-line telephone rather than using my mobile all the time; Virgin Media we're doing a reasonable package at the time, so I went with it and chose to be ex-directory from the start.

Problem:

One week into having the phone I started getting the occasional bit of telemarketing ... such as the favourites "Hello, you have been selected at random and have won a trip to Outer-Mongolia just call us blah blah" or "do you have credit card debts ...".

Ok, so being ex-directory can't stop an auto dialer calling random numbers, but I'm now getting 3 or 4 a day. Along with the people calling asking is that "Mr , well we must have the wrong number, but whilst we have you can we ask you some marketing questions?" ... no you sodding can't and stop calling!

Further Info:

Not that we should have to but we can sign up to opt-out of such calls using the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) - http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/ - apparently it is a legal requirement that companies do not make such calls to people registered with the TPS.  It reckons it'll take 28 days but lets see what happens now.

Santander

Hey my first rant is about a Bank and their 'wonderfull' service / systems...

Background:

My girlfriend has been with Abbey National (now Santander) for years; I am well versed at how rubbish their customer service is, so you may wonder why I got involved with the Bank in the first place.  

It was my own fault really for being a balance transfer whore and I'd miss-timed the latest card swap - I'd been charged interest and was looking for the best deal, sadly Santander was my only financially reasonable option.  I signed up for the card and sat back and got the card no problems.

Problem:

Their website and their telephone systems. I like to save paper and do all my banking online, which for other banks is an easy process. Turns out Santander, the third largest Bank in the World, can't seem to make this easy to setup. Their online registration kept failing on my card number (definitely not user error) so I couldn't continue; so I turned to the phone registration ... I detest telephone systems that ask you every question under the sun about your card number, date of birth, size of your left testicle to "help put you through to the right person" to then hear the call being forwarded to various on-hold systems, ringing, promotional information, more ringing and on-hold and "your call is important" messages to finally get through to an operator.

However, once through you get asked the same questions again about your card number, name ... testicle size. Just get the system to pass the information on rather than costing me more money on the phone.

Further info:

I feel slightly better for ranting about it .. although it's not the most annoying thing I've had recently.