Monday, June 04, 2012

Credit Where Credit's Due

Firstly, I seem to have completely lost the art of posting. Without the discipline of having to post every day I never seem to get round to it. Anyway......

I had a phone call from "3" today. Following up their calls of the last few days when the leave a message but not saying who they are. It's actually their collections department because I owe them two rental for my online dongle which I asked them to cancel as I no longer need it. The person who rang obviously reckons themselves as a credit controller. They know how to get money out of people - you threaten them that their credit rating will be damaged if they don't pay up. A great tactic if the person you are threatening actually gives a toss about their credit rating. I don't. Mine's so destroyed that a debt of £39.00 probably isn't going to bring me to my knees.

He spent a great deal of time telling me that they would have to put a black mark against my name and I spent a lot of time replying that he was welcome to do that but I wasn't going to be paying him any money today. So we spent 15 minutes in a repetitive argument where he became more agitated that his one weapon was failing miserably. So we left it there, with a promise from the nice young gentleman that he will be ringing again. No doubt to tell me that they are still considering putting a black mark against my name.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, there you are, I was considering sending out a search party. Good to see you still in one piece. Who are these people who think they can threaten you? tell the Headmaster, he won't stand for it you know!

Masher said...

I daresay that the tactic he used is the same as that used by every other mobile phone company (any company, actually) to try and get money from bad debtors.

In your case though - where you have already asked them to cancel your dongle account - it's a bit daft. I'd refuse to pay them as well.

Brennig said...

Posting daily is difficult. In fact posting with any degree of regularity is difficult if life keeps getting in the way.

Those '3' people sound very jolly. Fancy trying to get money out of you for a service you'd attempted to cancel!

kennamatic said...

Toffeeapple - Even I was beginning to think I'd disappeared. I learnt very early on to avoid headmasters even if you were in the right, somehow I always seemed to get the blame!

Masher - Not just mobile operators but all collection agencies. Having been a credit controller many years ago I found being friendly extracted lot more money than threats.

Brennig - To be fair, with my cashflow the way it is at the moment they would have got the same response even if I hadn't tried cancelling it!