We Need to Check it's YOU

I know I haven’t a hope in fiery hell of making it happen, yet this essay will conclude with a call to sack Susie Buckridge. I haven’t reached the end yet. I am reaching the end of my patience though. You don’t know who she is? Suffice to say at this point, that if you don’t know already, you will learn who this miserable woman is. But let’s begin with first things.

[You can listen to this essay here - read by me with an additional complimentary power ballad included. Scroll to the end to listen to an Extra Bonus Episode, with contextual commentary - with even more specially composed music as part of the recording.]

In the ongoing march towards technological nirvana, I have witnessed the torture and cruelty our various masters (and mistresses) are perfectly willing to inflict upon others. If you are basically a tech savvy person you may not have noticed the agony some people experience when trying to navigate what to you would be the simplest of technological procedures. A click here, a touch there, two factor this, two factor that – because - we need to check it’s you! Always, of course, for your safety. Many a cruel and unjust thing has been done for ‘safety reasons’ when nothing is safe about any of these wretched procedures. And yet, the sheer lack of imagination and basic kindness beggars belief.

For sure, thoughtful kindness never comes into anything these days. Surely, we can do better than this. You will know that the days of the customer being right have long departed. If you cannot cope, they no longer want your business – so go away.

Assuming readers are not blind – have you ever attempted to imagine what it’s like to be blind? What about just partially sighted? And then add being quite deaf. Now couple that with strictly limited mobility and excruciating pain when trying to walk or manoeuvre yourself in any way and you’ll be somewhere towards where you need to be for the purposes of this article. If none of that appeals to your childlike sense of ‘let’s pretend,’ I have one other option – that is to be cognitively impaired. A tad more difficult to envision I would guess. But say you forgot that two years ago you got a smartphone, and you now wonder why your old, rather defunct phone says, ‘no sim’ when you switch it on. That is after charging it up from a dead stop. Imagine not being able to find the words in your head for ‘text’ or ‘email’ and instead tell people you’ve had a ‘letter.’ Or what about pouring tinned baked beans into a sieve ready to cook them? Imagine the simple action of switching on the computer now being beyond your ability to manage. Imagine not being able to process the flow of a conversation or basic instructions. Everything going too fast for you. Not fun, is it? And you’re only pretending.

When you struggle to see, hear, move or process the basics, the everyday things you take for granted become very intimidating indeed. More and more of life is being swallowed up by a giant behemoth with super touchscreens, fingerprint recognition, and cloud computing all beyond the ability of some people to cope.

Picture yourself with the physical difficulties first. You are attempting to place an online order for grocery shopping on your Amazon Kindle. You’ve mastered this, to date, and feel able to complete the task. Then out of the blue comes the dreaded request. We need to check it’s you. Now dear reader, you are (as in you today, how you really ‘are’) by now only too familiar with this process and have little problem with its implementation. It’s irritating, but if you get the ‘app’ you can often do away with the extra layer of number typing and faffing. But you as the imagined disabled and elderly person – this will present a bone shakingly stressful nightmare. It will mean no groceries if the other person – the cognitively impaired person - cannot run up the stairs (dodging the stairlift) to get to the computer, to switch it on, to find the email programme, to get the 6-figure code, to remember it and come down the stairs only to find that the grocery order has now timed out. And all because - we need to check it’s you.

There is a growing sense of panic now. You forgot the password for your other grocery outlet, and this was your second choice this evening. No groceries. You click help – but a ‘bot’ is what is on the other end of the ‘chat’ and artificial, we know about but intelligence – well, that is open to question. You try other ways of getting the email because you never had any email address for yourself and you depended upon the cognitively impaired person who used to cope well. Now between the pair of you, you are stumped. You contact one of your offspring who tried to reason with Ocado. But the various safeguarding sanctimonies and platitudes really do not keep anyone safe – with the exception of the likes of Ocado. No can do. Never be fooled by the rhetoric. It is their own little backsides they want to cover – it is never, ever about you. And the grocery order must wait till another day. The human assistant unhelpfully suggested that the vulnerable person get the ‘app’ to avoid needing two-factor authentication. Only the wretched little ‘app’ won’t install on a Kindle. And whatever petty fight is going on with Amazon and Ocado the Bezos machine will no longer allow shortcuts to be made onto its desktop necessitating a complete tutorial on how to get the correct page to show at all.

Am I being too harsh? I think not. Anyone with a smidgen of imagination would realise that this kind of situation would, is and will be happening all over the country. To thousands of people. Pity those who have no offspring to call upon to do a chat or a call, or to set things up on a screen. If it were about you and the vulnerable – they would allow those offsprings with legal power of attorney to find a way of confirming this rapidly in times of need. They do not. If it were about you and the vulnerable, they would find alternative systems to authenticate the identities of the vulnerable. They do not.

They don’t really need to know it’s ‘you’ – they need to know they won’t be sued. They need to know they can tick a box. And be compliant. The word of the decade. (It might also be to get us to agree to digital ID - which would naturally compound our problems not alleviate them. That is a whole other rant).

The elderly people concerned in this tale must want to weep. The feeling of helplessness must be unbearable. After all, it is not that long since they held down responsible jobs, brought up a family, worked hard, sorted out everyone else’s problems. And now they are amongst the despised and desperate. Reader, do not think this won’t happen to you. This is the generation born in the midst of WWII; they have seen it all. They are not stupid. But the pace of change is fast and cruel. And for all of our so-called artificial intelligence, it is stupid.

However, I will say this for Ocado – at least a human person arrived eventually which is more than I can say for Talk Talk – the company that decidedly never wants to talk talk. It is a pun that lands too neatly on the plate, but there you are. One of life’s cruel little jokes.

Our masters and mistresses inflict upon us what they must. The mafia godfathers and godstars of the Fourth Reich (I mean – industrial revolution). The useful idiots that assist in the manifestation of evil will at times be named. And so I come to Susie Buckridge the little skank who is the CEO of Talk Talk. The litany of complaints cascading down on all manner of social media will offer an atom of comfort – it is good not to be alone – but the disgrace is at such a level of failure that one can only draw certain conclusions about what is going on. She’s there to run it down.

I would be mortified if one of my customers were abused in the way so many people describe. Real tales of abuse, harm, illegal activity, data breaches, extortion, cheating, not to mention poor and in some cases non-existent service.

Buckridge is not in the slightest bit bothered. Really. Her LinkedIn profile is so boastful and pretentious that it is at the very least on a par with Two-Tier-Keir’s astonishing lies about how the country is a “better place” after his reign. Replete with all manner of outrageous lies and froth – from bitter experience – the things she writes about herself cannot possibly be true in the real sense of the word. Perhaps like the lies we see up and down the land, she just makes things true by fiat.

Let’s have a look at Buckridge’s LinkedIn Lies.

On herself: Blah blah…”Ensuring strong financial governance, robust technology and operational infrastructure.” The reality is that the company is in serious financial trouble, the technology is failing and the systems are risible.

On her expertise: “Strengthen customer engagement - Reduce customer churn – improve market position.” Customers cannot engage with the company no matter how hard they try. It is impossible to speak to someone unless you go through endless systems and hurdles. Vulnerable customers are not given any special assistance (they will claim otherwise but the reality is that in practice it does not happen). On churn (a hilarious claim on her behalf) – despite trying very hard to “engage” the elderly couple will be guided through a one click move away to another company. Buckridge has robbed them enough and it is time to cut losses. The complaints will still go in though. My guess is that market position can never be recovered.

On her Leadership skills – “embedding accountability, clarity and pace, creating cultures that are customer focused data informed and outcome driven.” More hilarity.

It just goes to show that you can write any old guff you want on your LinkedIn profile and you will not only get away with it, but you will also thrive in a world of lies! Why are people so angry about the black Cambridge professor Jason Arday, who plagiarised his PhD thesis? He was only doing what everyone else is doing in their various roles. He must be super startled to see all of the fuss.

But a lie is a lie.

Here’s a question. How do you know someone has been to Cambridge? In the same way you know if someone is vegan – they will tell you. And so Buckridge proudly boasts of having gone to Cambridge University. This of course, is to signify that she is clever, but a better word might be cunning. She may well just have been a little scrubber at Peterson or Jesus, cleaning the floors and turning tricks, and cashing in favours to get to the top. And it will have been a technical truism that she went to Cambridge!

Oh that was low. I know. But you have no idea what her company has put me and my loved ones through. You really haven’t. I am punching up as Andrew Doyle would say. You’ll see in what follows.

A capable, clever person does not run a company in the way she runs that company - because she’s running Talk Talk into the ground. Unless she is clever in the sense of other renowned Cambridge pretenders of old, Burgess, MacLane and Blunt, and that plagiarising professor. I guess in this world of puffery and lies, Buckridge is relaying her carefully rehearsed ‘legend’ you know, the one that pretends she is a businesswoman when she is really a criminal running an extortion racket.

Think Carmella Soprano taking over after Tony’s demise, and you have a pretty good picture of skanky Buckridge.

It can’t be long until the business goes bust. But you know how the mafia are. Talk Talk is the most complained about telecommunications company in Britain. The regulator is pretty quiet, and the money keeps rolling in. Talk Talk just ignores complaints. Remember when David Brent from The Office filed an important communication in the wastepaper basket (remember how we laughed at the special filing cabinet for communications like these!). That’s where our complaints have landed, or so it seems.

There is bound to be a fabulous opportunity waiting for her (perhaps in waste management!) when she walks away with a golden handshake and a shiny new car, even more eye-catching lipstick and a new crocheted see-through top.

I’ve long ceased worrying about big salaries in themselves. But the final straw was learning from an acquaintance that she does not actually draw a six-figure salary but a seven figure one. And dear reader, that was the moment when I really saw red. The elderly people I wrote about struggling with Ocado have been overcharged by Talk Talk by over 50% for years now. One of madam’s stated aims was to prevent just this. She is building wealth on precisely the opposite of what she claims. But whoever tests claims these days?

If it were just the overcharging, that would be one thing, but it turns out that the account is held by the cognitively impaired person (let’s call him Joe) and things have been immensely disastrous for some time. Two years ago or thereabouts, Joe’s email got seriously hacked. Despite old Joe’s pathetic pleas for help, (and my own once I discovered the extent of the problem), none has been forthcoming. Nothing at all. The can has been kicked down the road for around two years. It’s not for the want of trying - painful though that has been.

Buckridge has implemented a system which obliges her drones to get people off the phone within a strict time limit so just when you think you are getting somewhere, you are passed onto another drone where the matter is not escalated (in the way you imagined) but requires the whole process to begin again. Believe me, after telling and re-telling the miserable story six or seven times, a person is driven mad. They want you off the phone fast (remember Talk Talk never want to Talk Talk!) and the quickest way to do this is to keep you on a carousel of doom. You get fed up and the issue - for them - is gone. They then send a text message that says the issue is ‘now resolved’ and if you are the cognitively impaired Joe, you will see it as a strange letter you cannot comprehend and your bewilderment grows. Well, it would do after having been hacked by a sophisticated hacker who has the ability to operate most slyly within the system. It has been so intricate that is has to be an inside job. That cannot be proven, but I would lay bets it is - and it would explain why Talk Talk have just left the situation to fester for so long.

I have watched Joe trembling with anxiety and bewilderment. I have seen Mary sob with fear and frustration at this cruel cowardly new world. It is not pleasant to witness, not for a second. I see my own future and I shiver.

Talk Talk can only be regarded as a criminal organisation as I have deduced. Having reported the matter on the ‘chat’ several times, by phone several times, had a phone appointment missed by them, had actual hard copy letters (sent recorded delivery) ignored, witnessed the email system having been hacked to the point where it is not accessible to Joe or his family at all, where emails continue to be sent out on Joe’s behalf in a clear data breach out to anyone who ever had dealings with him, risking other elderly persons’ chances of phishing trouble. I have never seen anything like it. The hacker moved in when Joe changed the password, then altered the settings so the inbox cannot even forward email on to another address. The email system has now shut him out. And now Talk Talk have had the cheek – the brass neck to write to Joe and complain that his inbox is full and they can no longer send him the emails they want to send him.

The upshot is that Buckridge is a liar and cheat, a thief and a skank who ‘runs’ what amounts to a criminal organisation. Her LinkedIn lies are on a par with “Professor” Jason Arday. Stop looking at him and pay attention to her. I reckon his crimes are nothing compared to hers. The debacle of Talk Talk may yet match the horror of the recent Post Office scandal in Britain; I do think it is that bad.

So, dear Cambridge educated missy, here’s what you should have done. You should have delegated to a minion. You should have recognised the seriousness of the situation. And if the letters we sent are sitting on top of a whole pile of other letters, then get a group of minions on the case and start putting customers at the heart of what you do. Be a Mensch and care for the elderly and vulnerable - it’s not actually enough to say you’re doing this - you actually have to do it. That’s the way to reduce ‘churn’ lovey dovey, that’s the way to get good customer engagement pet. And if this polytechnic girl from Liverpool has to give lessons in the basics to a swanky Cambridge graduate, walk her through these simple steps, it kind of makes a lie out of the Cambridge clever schtick doesn’t it? Because this is why ordinary folks have had it with the lanyard LinkedIn show-offs who cannot actually do the job.

I’ll happily take all of this back if Buckridge apologises to Joe and Mary, in writing, buys Mary a nice bouquet of flowers, pays some compensation for the overcharging, gets a tech bloke to fix the email inbox and promises to put all of those noble LinkedIn boastful intentions into action. But you and I know that’s just not going to happen. So ranting like this is all I have left, having exhausted every other avenue.

Quite simply, she needs to be sacked.

Dear Susie, was this too ranty? Prove me wrong. Go on. Do it. Because Talk Talk ain’t ‘for everyone’ on your watch, that’s for sure. Start by getting off your backside and finally asnwering my ever growing sheaves of correspondence. You earn a seven figure salary, and we have the right to expect more from you than the risible performance we are seeing right now.

HERE - Special BONUS audio - where I reflect somewhat on the essay (and recording) which I acknowledge as being a bit of a rant, and add some further context and detail.

Plus - additional music tracks are included here, in this recording, for your enjoyment!

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Music:

Susie, Where do you Go (When your Conscience comes Knocking)? Power ballad in first recording, rock and ballad versions in the Bonus recording, by Caroline Kaye, The Sideways Thinker, with Suno.

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