"Customer Service?" More larfs guv!
It's great to know that it's not just plebs like us, but also Mrs. Andrew Marr (the BBC's longtime Political Editor for non-Limeys/Poms/Rosbifs reading this) who gets treated like an inconvenience by those who use one of the greatest phrases since the ex-Eastern Bloc's rulers used "People's Democracies" to describe themselves...
Britain's service sector is now a failing digital souk: Too many offers and not enough information - instead of empowering us, the modern economy is making us gullible
Jackie Ashley, The Guardian, Monday March 13, 2006
Lillian Lazonby was an elderly woman who lived in Birmingham and died last week of a massive stroke brought on by stress. The stress that killed her was apparently caused by one of the scourges of today: junk mail. She became addicted, not to alcohol or drugs but to the false hope that junk mail brings. When she died she had spent her life savings on bogus draws and competitions. There were 10,000 letters in her flat.
You know the letters because they fall through the letterboxes of every home in the country. They are the ones telling you to hurry because you've just won a prize and only need to send a modest processing fee to collect it; the multicoloured junk about foreign lotteries, vague schemes to turn your luck around and get-rich-quick chain letters. Most of us throw this rubbish straight in the bin. But plenty have replied, sent a cheque, and had some worthless token back. A few, like Lillian, become seriously addicted and spend money - in her case, apparently, £36,000 - on prize draws.
It is one of those stories that seems to symbolise so much else about everyday life in the Britain of the 2000s. From the hysterical "sign up now ... buy this ... special deal" pop-ups that infest websites to the cold-callers who ring home telephones at all hours of the day and night, we are surrounded by a marketing frenzy that would astonish and appal earlier generations. It has sneaked up on us, just like the surveillance society, an irritation now morphing into a menace.
True, there have always been snake-oil salesmen - and there have always been gullible people. From the spivs and the excesses of hire-purchase, to the pools mania and the pyramid-selling ramps, modern capitalism has always been attended by outright hucksters. All that has changed, you might say, is that the delivery systems are faster and what was once a national problem is now global.
Is this just an inevitable result of globalisation and the "more open market in services" that every minister lauds? Is it an inevitable part of our greedier society, just one end of a scale of gullibility and debt that leads, at the other end, to the Blairs and their £4m mortgage, which rumour says they are desperately struggling to service?
It is certainly part of a bigger story that the political world barely discusses: the inefficiency of our so-called service economy. Ignore the fraudsters for a moment, and think about the mainstream businesses Britons are entangled with - pension companies, banks, major shopping companies. Total household debt is now an astonishing £1,168bn. Consumer credit, bloated as it is, grows at a slightly lower rate than it used to, but borrowing for mortgages continues to rocket, up another £9.2bn in January. Tony and Cherie are not alone.
All of this might not matter if the credit industry knew its customers and wasn't engaged in cut-throat competition to sell, sell, sell. But there is a huge greed-and-gullibility market that is entirely legal and even mainstream, operating alongside the scams and "congratulations" letters dropping on doormats. It stretches from badly educated families who don't realise the debt-traps they are entering to those middle-class people pumping up their indebtedness in the hope that the housing market will keep on rocketing.
Debt helplines and debt charities have been deluged by calls in the first part of the year; young people are said now to be part of a "debt culture", helped along by student loans. At least, at long last, the iniquitous store cards, with their APRs of 30% or more, are coming under scrutiny, with new regulations ahead.
In theory, the modern digital economy should have empowered us all so that we are better able to manage the gap between our incomes and our raging desire to buy more, and to make an easy buck, somehow, somewhere. We have a vast apparatus of regulations, a state bureaucracy overseeing banking and credit, endless private advisers and more websites than any normal person could visit in a lifetime. Once, Labour politicians would have been full of puritanical warnings about debt and greed, but those days have long gone. The mood today is: why worry? Britain's growing - hallelujah!
Well, having just spent an enforced week at home thanks to family illnesses, I've been subjected to a mild service-economy reality check. I've taken the chance to try to sort out my tax affairs, book a domestic flight, order new parts for the dishwasher and summon help to fix the squeaking of the tumble-drier and an extremely slow-draining sink. (None of this is remotely possible if, like the majority of the country, you cannot guarantee to be at home 24/7, awaiting visits and phone calls.) This means listening to loops of smug recorded messages about how valuable my custom is (interspersed with soothing music) and occasionally hurling phones across the room when, after 40 minutes, you are finally cut off. There are at least moments of comedy. The recorded messages for one insurance company now feature calming "fragments of great poetry".
When you finally penetrate the computer-telephony wall, it is typical to talk to someone who knows nothing about the account, the policy or whatever. The only lines that work are the lines that sell. This is not a service economy. This is a failing digital souk, and it is where most of Britain now has to live.
There are simply too many offers and demands out there about how to spend or save our money. All the attempts of government to help the consumer are well-meaning, but the sheer power of the market is a hundred times stronger. What should be done? The government seems frankly intimidated by the service sector, as it might have once been intimidated by the owners of car-making companies or by trade unions. Yet indebtedness, bad financial advice and rip-off scams probably cause more misery to more people than most of what Westminster discusses. More aggressive legislation, and more open criticism by ministers, should surely be at the centre of political debate.
You could argue, of course, that a prime minister who struggles so much with his own mortgage and ministers who have been in so much hot financial water already are hardly best placed to advise the rest of us. But the duty of government is to plunge itself into the problems of wider society, to know the daily life it oversees. In this case, it isn't. Lillian Lazonby was an extreme case. But in her hope, gullibility and increasing panic, she could stand for millions.
jackie.ashley@guardian.co.uk
Britain's service sector is now a failing digital souk: Too many offers and not enough information - instead of empowering us, the modern economy is making us gullible
Jackie Ashley, The Guardian, Monday March 13, 2006
Lillian Lazonby was an elderly woman who lived in Birmingham and died last week of a massive stroke brought on by stress. The stress that killed her was apparently caused by one of the scourges of today: junk mail. She became addicted, not to alcohol or drugs but to the false hope that junk mail brings. When she died she had spent her life savings on bogus draws and competitions. There were 10,000 letters in her flat.
You know the letters because they fall through the letterboxes of every home in the country. They are the ones telling you to hurry because you've just won a prize and only need to send a modest processing fee to collect it; the multicoloured junk about foreign lotteries, vague schemes to turn your luck around and get-rich-quick chain letters. Most of us throw this rubbish straight in the bin. But plenty have replied, sent a cheque, and had some worthless token back. A few, like Lillian, become seriously addicted and spend money - in her case, apparently, £36,000 - on prize draws.
It is one of those stories that seems to symbolise so much else about everyday life in the Britain of the 2000s. From the hysterical "sign up now ... buy this ... special deal" pop-ups that infest websites to the cold-callers who ring home telephones at all hours of the day and night, we are surrounded by a marketing frenzy that would astonish and appal earlier generations. It has sneaked up on us, just like the surveillance society, an irritation now morphing into a menace.
True, there have always been snake-oil salesmen - and there have always been gullible people. From the spivs and the excesses of hire-purchase, to the pools mania and the pyramid-selling ramps, modern capitalism has always been attended by outright hucksters. All that has changed, you might say, is that the delivery systems are faster and what was once a national problem is now global.
Is this just an inevitable result of globalisation and the "more open market in services" that every minister lauds? Is it an inevitable part of our greedier society, just one end of a scale of gullibility and debt that leads, at the other end, to the Blairs and their £4m mortgage, which rumour says they are desperately struggling to service?
It is certainly part of a bigger story that the political world barely discusses: the inefficiency of our so-called service economy. Ignore the fraudsters for a moment, and think about the mainstream businesses Britons are entangled with - pension companies, banks, major shopping companies. Total household debt is now an astonishing £1,168bn. Consumer credit, bloated as it is, grows at a slightly lower rate than it used to, but borrowing for mortgages continues to rocket, up another £9.2bn in January. Tony and Cherie are not alone.
All of this might not matter if the credit industry knew its customers and wasn't engaged in cut-throat competition to sell, sell, sell. But there is a huge greed-and-gullibility market that is entirely legal and even mainstream, operating alongside the scams and "congratulations" letters dropping on doormats. It stretches from badly educated families who don't realise the debt-traps they are entering to those middle-class people pumping up their indebtedness in the hope that the housing market will keep on rocketing.
Debt helplines and debt charities have been deluged by calls in the first part of the year; young people are said now to be part of a "debt culture", helped along by student loans. At least, at long last, the iniquitous store cards, with their APRs of 30% or more, are coming under scrutiny, with new regulations ahead.
In theory, the modern digital economy should have empowered us all so that we are better able to manage the gap between our incomes and our raging desire to buy more, and to make an easy buck, somehow, somewhere. We have a vast apparatus of regulations, a state bureaucracy overseeing banking and credit, endless private advisers and more websites than any normal person could visit in a lifetime. Once, Labour politicians would have been full of puritanical warnings about debt and greed, but those days have long gone. The mood today is: why worry? Britain's growing - hallelujah!
Well, having just spent an enforced week at home thanks to family illnesses, I've been subjected to a mild service-economy reality check. I've taken the chance to try to sort out my tax affairs, book a domestic flight, order new parts for the dishwasher and summon help to fix the squeaking of the tumble-drier and an extremely slow-draining sink. (None of this is remotely possible if, like the majority of the country, you cannot guarantee to be at home 24/7, awaiting visits and phone calls.) This means listening to loops of smug recorded messages about how valuable my custom is (interspersed with soothing music) and occasionally hurling phones across the room when, after 40 minutes, you are finally cut off. There are at least moments of comedy. The recorded messages for one insurance company now feature calming "fragments of great poetry".
When you finally penetrate the computer-telephony wall, it is typical to talk to someone who knows nothing about the account, the policy or whatever. The only lines that work are the lines that sell. This is not a service economy. This is a failing digital souk, and it is where most of Britain now has to live.
There are simply too many offers and demands out there about how to spend or save our money. All the attempts of government to help the consumer are well-meaning, but the sheer power of the market is a hundred times stronger. What should be done? The government seems frankly intimidated by the service sector, as it might have once been intimidated by the owners of car-making companies or by trade unions. Yet indebtedness, bad financial advice and rip-off scams probably cause more misery to more people than most of what Westminster discusses. More aggressive legislation, and more open criticism by ministers, should surely be at the centre of political debate.
You could argue, of course, that a prime minister who struggles so much with his own mortgage and ministers who have been in so much hot financial water already are hardly best placed to advise the rest of us. But the duty of government is to plunge itself into the problems of wider society, to know the daily life it oversees. In this case, it isn't. Lillian Lazonby was an extreme case. But in her hope, gullibility and increasing panic, she could stand for millions.
jackie.ashley@guardian.co.uk
posted by Anglonoel | 10:17 pm
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