Ridiculous Sell Sell Sell.

[padi56]

For the sake of Jesus Why oh why do we have to put up with this ridiculous sell.....sell......sell......mentality?

About a year ago I took out a credit card from the financial services arm of a well known high street bank. I don’t do this as a rule, but now was about to spend several grand on furniture and they had some offer whereby (if I recall correctly) you got 3% back in gift vouchers.

So the logic was, if I’m going to spend £5k and have £5k in the bank, I may as well get the 3% benefit (£150) and keep the cash in my current account (which generously pays 1% below base – another £30) and trouser £180 in total.

If I then spend half the ‘profit’ on a treat for the wife, I can bask in the glory of a top up on the old brownie-point-ometer. Job done you might think.

This was until, part way through last month I receive, out of the blue a nice fat wad of credit card cheques inviting me to go on a great bloody big spending splurge. Incurring not only a 2% admin fee, but also instant interest from the moment the cheque hits the retailer’s grubby mitts - all contained in the fine print.No bleeding thank you


Anyway, these things arrive on Thursday: NOT A GOOD DAY. So I call customer services to register a complaint and speak to a guy called Gupreet yes a bloody Indian call centre. Gupreet dutifully notes the complaint and all seems fine and dandy but for one little detail.

GUPREET THEN STARTED READING FROM A BLOODY SALES SCRIPT

Gupreet then tries to sell me insurance to cover my bloody (NIL BALANCE) against death, disease, accident, ethnic cleansing,small pox ,large pox, regime change or any other disaster natural to man or beast made that might randomly affect my hitherto unblemished ability to honour my non-existent financial obligation.

So Gupreet cops another (higher decibel) rant castigating him for his obstinate stupidity in pursuing his lunatic sales target. This is duly logged as a second complaint and I sarcastically invite Gupreet to go for the hat-trick – but he declines and 48 hours later a grovelling apology letter arrives promising I will never be sold to or pitched at again - never, ever, ever, for all eternity so help you god.(Yes they were really telling porkies)

Great. Today I get a statement and there’s a curious £50 quid. So I call to query it and speak to (I kid you not) “Jizz”. Jizz offers to send me a form to fill in and is doing really really well until:

“As a valued customer of our organisation I’d like to offer you our very competitive payment protection...........”

Anyway I’ve just broken the scissors, the card is in bits in the bin and Jizz’s supervisor has now cancelled the account and is probably seeking treatment for a burst ear drum.

Why the hell do we do it?

All this bloody country does is recycle cash. Each organisation in turn taking a few crumbs here and there and getting rich on the proceeds and your average man in the street is robbed in the process. Customer services has become an underhand sales department and the 08- numbers generate them profit and cost you money if you have the bravado to call them.

I know that no-one has to get into debt, no one has to be ripped off, but when the constant barrage of marketing and high pressure sales pitches hits the less discerning among us, it’s not hard to see why we’re just a little bit buggered.

I don’t know why this kind of thing incenses me so much – but it bloody does and I make no apologies.

Do you want fries with that Sir?

No. But I'll take the insurance, the admin fees and pay your interest charges because that's a soft sell isn't it?

It's a race to see who goes bust first - the punters wallowing in a pools of debt, or the companies who must surely be on the brink of running out of pointless products to sell to a maxed-out audience.