Readers Warned: Do This Now!

The remit of a local newspaper is quite simple, to report on news and sport and other stories relevant to the paper’s catchment area. In recent years this has become increasingly difficult as local newspapers have been bought out by groups like Trinity Mirror (now known as Reach plc) which publish 240 regional newspapers. To offset cutbacks in reporting staff, these papers publish more and more syndicated articles, many of which lack local relevance.

Many print versions of local papers continue to do a sterling job in reporting local news and sport despite cutbacks, even if a lot does rely on members of the public providing stories. This is especially true on some sports pages where sports teams’ websites and blogs are relied upon for a good deal of the content.

Most local newspapers now publish e-editions where the print version is faithfully reproduced online, but will also have an online presence that consistently falls into the trap of publishing news that isn’t local, or isn’t news at all, and much of which is trivial or puerile.

As I scroll through my social media feeds, I see loads of posts from local newspapers that I follow with links to dramatic sounding stories, but when I click on them I find that the events that they describe have happened many miles from where I live; the story is not local at all.

Then there are the puff pieces thinly disguised as journalism, like “I tried Kent’s best ice cream parlour and now I’m spoilt for anywhere else,” or “Inside town’s fabulous house that’s a steal at £2million.” It’s little more than free advertising much of the time.

Much beloved of local newspaper websites are the stories of potholes, parking problems, school uniforms, and the perils of purchasing alcohol with a minor in tow.

Potholes, stories of which must be accompanied by a picture of a local resident (usually male, over 60, balding and wearing a drab anorak) pointing at the offending pothole, are meat and drink to local newspaper websites. It is mandatory to include reference to the age, occupation (or former occupation) of the person complaining about said pothole, as must any damage – or even potential damage – done to their vehicle. Extra kudos for describing failed attempts to get the local council to do anything about it.

Parking is another favourite, especially tales of motorists charged exorbitant penalties for some infraction of the regulations in some car park or other. A photograph should accompany the piece, perhaps showing the victim in said car park; failing that, a picture of them and their vehicle may suffice. It goes without saying that the offended party must vow never to return to the location in question.

Children sent home for school for wearing non-uniform clothing or shoes, or for having a haircut deemed inappropriate are other favourites. These must be accompanied by a picture of parent and child looking sad, along with offending item of clothing or haircut. The article must contain reference to how much the item of clothing or haircut cost and why the school’s ruling is blatantly unfair.

Selling alcohol or other age restricted products to persons under the age limit is of course a serious offence and can get shop keepers and individual shop workers in trouble if they breach the regulations. A story much loved of local newspapers features the parent who has a child under 18 in tow as they do their weekly supermarket shop, which includes a bottle of wine or some beer. The cashier refuses to sell them the alcoholic beverage even though they are clearly over 18 because they have a minor with them, the thinking being that they might supply that minor with said wine or beer. Often the parent will suggest that their child goes and waits in the car while the transaction is completed; this is refused on the grounds that the child may still be supplied with the booze. In a recent example of the story however, a spokesman for Tesco stated that shop staff should not refuse to sell alcohol to adults who are clearly over 18, regardless of the age of any child who may be with them.

Potholes, parking, and sales of alcohol being denied are old hat, however. A new breed of local newspaper story has begun to appear online and there’s no other word for it than clickbait.

We are already familiar with clickbait and headlines that look like these:

“You’ll Never Believe This _________ “

“How to Achieve Results Using This One Weird Trick”

“They Didn’t Know _________ . Then This Happened …”

By now most of us ignore these sorts of headlines but recently I’ve started to see a new breed, one that is more subtle, more intriguing, and more likely to pique our interest to the extent that we do click on them. They come in the form of warnings or commands and I confess to have become addicted to reading them, if for no other reason than to satisfy my curiosity at the bonkers way something that is either well known or completely mundane has been used for an article with such a sensational headline.

For your delectation, delight, appreciation, and reading pleasure I have curated a few of them here. Most of them appear on the Birmingham Live website which, were it not for the genuine news stories that also appear on it, might be mistaken for a spoof site, so many are there. (Click on the links to see the stories in all their glory).

Drivers must keep wet wipes in car for 'three months' from this weekend

The long and short of this is that fuel pump handles at petrol stations may be a source of virus transmission and wet wipes may prevent the spread of things like colds or flu. It’s like Covid never happened.

UK households urged to put sheet of A4 paper in fridge this week

This one took two people to write apparently, and what it all boils down to is that your fridge may become less efficient if the door seal starts to deteriorate. The article describes way to check its integrity using a piece of paper.

UK households with soup in cupboards in September and October warned

Okay, this one looks important. Most of us have tins of soup in our cupboards as a standby to provide a hot meal, especially as autumn starts to give way to winter. This is a warning we need to read, surely? It turns out that this has nothing to do with any tinned soup we might have, instead it warns of the dangers of injury that may occur when using a knife to chop slippery veg like butternut squash and pumpkin. So basically, the message is, take care when using a knife.

Drivers must 'reverse onto their driveways' or face 'unlimited' fine

Wow, an “unlimited fine” for not reversing onto my driveway! Read the article and you’ll find that all the author has done is take a section of the Highway Code and write 400 words about it. Here is the relevant section. As you’ll see, it doesn’t say you must reverse onto your driveway, just that you should if you can.

Finally, another motoring headline:

Drivers must 'completely' empty their car in October due to new Labour rule

Again, wow! The Labour party are bringing in a rule that I must empty my car of everything in October! Well, no they haven’t. There’s a rumour that Labour’s upcoming budget may see an increase in fuel duty and driving around with an overladen car increases fuel consumption; the idea behind the story makes sense even if the headline is way over the top.

These are just a few of the stories that I’ve come across that pair sensational headlines with mundane stories – I found ten in an hour browsing Apple News alone – and now that I’ve brought them to your attention, I reckon you’ll see them everywhere too.

 

 

 

“Your Call Is Important To Us”

The recorded voice on the other end of the phone insists that your call is important to them. Not important enough that they are going to answer it anytime soon though, because they are “experiencing higher than normal call volumes,” as if there were any other type of call volumes.

It didn’t used to be this way, but once upon a time we didn’t have to ring our energy provider, our cable TV provider, our internet service provider, or our mobile phone company to fix some problem or error on their part. My parents were supplied with electricity and gas by the nationalised London Electricity Board and North Thames Gas; the landline telephone (and they didn’t get one till I was a teenager) was from the General Post Office and TV channels were free (TV Licence apart) and came through the aerial in the loft. My mum and dad didn’t have a bank account until sometime in the 1970s, before that whatever money they saved went into the Post Office.

Bills came in quarterly and were paid in cash at the Post Office. The rent was paid in cash to the rent man who called each week, likewise instalments on insurance policies. Problems were few and far between; if the power went out it was because the whole area had a power cut. There was much less to go wrong and years would pass before my parents had cause to contact anyone with a problem about anything.

It’s different today.

There’s a whole raft of different energy suppliers eager to sell you gas and electricity at a bewildering array of tariffs. There are cable and satellite TV companies, who may or may not be the same company that provides you with broadband; there are numerous mobile phone companies, and any number of banks and other financial institutions offering a wide range of different savings and loan products. And that wide range of highly sophisticated and specialised services and products means one thing: There are more things to go wrong, and go wrong they do, all too frequently. It’s bad enough that things go wrong because getting them fixed is always a challenge, but the first hurdle to get over is actually getting in touch with someone who can help.

You know how it goes; you’ve got a problem with one of the companies that supplies you with something, gas, electricity, cable TV, the internet. They’ve done something wrong. Typically, they’ve charged you incorrectly and you need to speak to someone to fix it, so you go on their website and click the link that says “Contact Us.” What you now see are barriers to actually communicating with them going up.

“Chat to us online,” they offer. So you do. What you get is a bot that wants to direct you through a very narrow and limited set of options and which is really no more than a sort of interactive version of their FAQs. Want to chat to an actual human being? No chance. Perhaps you would like to email them. There’s likely not an actual email address, more likely a web form which, in my experience is no more likely to produce a response than the chat bot does. Ideally, you’d like to phone them but there are plenty of websites that don’t list a phone number under Contact Us, so you Google it, and lo and behold, there’s a number that some previously frustrated customer has found and published, so you ring it.

Back in the days before Call Centres were a thing, ringing a bank or a utility company either got you through to someone straight away or you got an engaged tone, in which case you kept redialling till you did get someone. That was frustrating in itself, particularly in the days of rotary dial telephones that had no redial facility, but eventually you got through. Now you dial the number and listen to an interminable menu of options and, having chosen the one you think most closely resembles the one you need, you listen to the announcement: “Your call is held in a queue and will be answered by the next available operator.” If you’re lucky, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes or more later, a real person says, “Hello,” if you’re unlucky then you’ll encounter something that seems to be happening frequently now and which is completely unacceptable in my view.

I first encountered it with Scottish Power. It wasn’t even my problem. My late mother-in-law had been receiving emails from them even though she didn’t use Scottish Power. Someone with a similar email address had obviously set up their online account incorrectly. There wasn’t really any responsibility on my part to do anything but I thought I’d be helpful and bring it to Scottish Power’s attention, so I rang – several times. I never got to speak to anyone because their automated response was to the effect that they were very busy, too busy to take my call in fact, and that I should try again later so they were disconnecting the call.

Twitter and Google eventually connected me to someone in the CEO’s office. We spoke on the phone and she offered me a telephone number, different from the Call Centre number, to call in the event of further problems, which there were. When I called the number I got the Call Centre, the message, and a dial tone.

This week Val had reason to call P&O Cruises. She wanted to speak to Customer Services. No one answered the phone of course, instead there was a message to the effect that all their agents were busy and that it was unacceptable to make customers wait. She should call back “at a later date,” the message said, then the call was disconnected. More acceptable to simply cut people off than ask them to wait in a queue, it seems.

Finally, Virgin Media. A slightly different story here as I’ve had to call them on a number of occasions recently after we accidentally subscribed to Netflix and wanted it cancelled. On the plus side, on the three or four occasions I’ve called, I’ve been connected to a real person within an acceptable length of time. The downside has been that the people I have spoken with have been universally hopeless – in one conversation I was actually told that I should have been aware of how Virgin Media’s internal processes work, even though the person I had previously spoken to clearly didn’t! Virgin actually phoned me after one call, not to sort out the problem of course, but to ask further questions about the less than complimentary answers I had supplied on an online feedback form about how my problem had been solved – or not solved, I should say.

The long and the short of it is that we are now living in an age when communication should be quick, easy, efficient, and achievable through a variety of channels. What we have are organisations that erect barriers to communication, leaving customers frustrated and often out of pocket while they try and get their problems sorted.

The pretence of solving customers’ problems is now slipping:  By not even taking calls, organisations are crossing their fingers and hoping that people give up, go away, and accept whatever errors and poor service is being foisted upon them. We mustn’t let them get away with it.