More customer service tales of woe

My Whirlpool tales of woe continue. Suffice to say, the planning department never called me back, and when I called today, my unhelpful customer service representative merely said that the engineer had ordered the part on Friday (!), it should take 5 working days to arrive in the Netherlands from Italy -- because apparently FedEx doesn't work the Italy-NL route -- and my obviously unreliable engineer will call me about when he's able to come round. Yeah yeah. I've put a reminder in my diary to phone back on Friday, and I will devote some time to finding out the name and phone number of the head of Whirlpool so that I can shout at him/her.

In contrast, cancelling our UPC service today was almost laughably simple. After wrestling with their IVR system, a very nice lady told me the service would be switched off in one month's time. Nothing about a final bill or cancelling the direct debit, but I'm sure that will all follow naturally. Ahem.

And to prove that it's not just the Netherlands that suffers from complicated bureaucracy, yesterday I had to deal with First Direct banking application forms. PJ and I want to set up a joint account to pay rent and bills from back in the UK. First up, they need my permanent UK address. I don't have one. Then they need proof of my residence at said UK address in the shape of a utility bill or bank statement -- and it has to be an original, not a photocopy. Again, I don't have any of these. We phone the call center and get a good Northern lass who tells us not to worry, to put down PJ's mum's address (his UK permanent address) and to just skip the proof of residence; as PJ is an account-holder with them, it "should" be fine. Again, we'll see. But at least I understood their IVR system.

So, all we have left are the mortgage company, the contents insurance company, the life insurance company, the bank, the water service, the city of Amsterdam, and our Dutch pensions company. Should be easy!