If you’ve got a moment, sit back and have a read of this blog post — the first para is below… (thanks Jeremy)
Link: The Assmobile Association « I look so I can hear….
Charlie changed to the AA last year, solely because they offer a roadside recovery service for deaf customers via mobile phone text. Despite all the technological advances with hearing aids etc, he and his wife Ros just cannot use a phone or mobile – so in the past they have had to suffer the palaver of texting someone else to phone AA / RAC / Green Flag or whatever and communicating via a third party – time consuming, frustrating, and prone to problems.
Text messaging is an absolutely fantastic invention for the deaf. We once provided our text-to-screen system for a deaf club night, the concept being that these youngsters go along to this club night and feel the vibrations and dance away. Phenomenal.
Anyway I am gratified to find out that the AA has a text message service. If you’re deaf and your car has stopped working, you can’t easily make and receive a standard audio phone call.
Problem solved by introducing the text service, yeah?
No.
Some idiot, some total arse, has implemented this system and not realised, recognised or bothered that there’s a FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM thus:
1. You text the AA telling them your location and so on.
2. They reply acknowledging your status.
All is fine… until…
3. They try and phone you from an anonymous number to find out where you are.
Almost helpful.
When my Range Rover had a disagreement with lack of oil and conked out on the M25 I wanted to be rescued by an AA chappie. Instead I was outsourced to some mechanic group. I don’t think the AA had many teams working that evening. All of a sudden I started getting phone calls from ‘So and So Recovery’ asking exactly where I was. Hardly what I expected but at least I was sorted. Not quite the brand image portrayed by the ads.
However imagine the trauma when you’re sat, cold for hours, waiting for the magic, caring AA man to arrive … and you keep getting phone calls. Which you can’t answer. You can’t reply to. You can’t send a text message to the number explaining you’re unable to listen to their call because the idiots are calling you from an anonymous number.
How frustrating! How annoying! How stupid!
If you’re going to launch a text messaging service, couldn’t you have at least made it work PROPERLY. I really can’t stand it when, CLEARLY, the project manager in charge of introducing this couldn’t be bothered.
I can imagine the depressing office, somewhere in some regional AA headquarters, a disused stained whiteboard in the corner and lots of those stupid mini machine coffee cups littering the table.
“Right we need to do text messaging,” says the Project Manager.
The helpful, enthusiastic number-two jumps in with, “Ok, well, we need to really make this work for our customers, so we’ll need to completely redesign how we…”
“Hold on,” says the Project Manager, “We can make this a piece of piss! Let’s just stick text on the front-end of our existing system and we’re done, right?”
“Er,” says the number-two, “What about, you know, people who actually want to text us? And have a conversation with us by text?”
“Who? You what? Nahhh, balls to that, that’s too difficult,” says the Project Manager, “Stuff’em. Let’s just stick text on the front end and go to the pub.”
Useless.
Perhaps the above linked story is just an abberation. The author does point to a few people he/she knows that have managed to use The AA text service successfully. I wonder if the flaw is when they export the job to contractors who don’t bother with texting? Whatever, it’s just not a good service for those who really need it.
Too right. Tell it as it is.
I wonder why no one has sued them yet for breach of the DDA.