Why does Direct Line use an 0845 number for its car insurance Customer Services? And why doesn't it allow customers to e-mail it?
The Customer Services woman I've just spoken to after a seventeen-and-a-half-minute wait on hold couldn't answer either of those questions.
So I was forced to speculate myself.
Could it be, I asked her, that Direct Line makes huge profits every year from forcing customers to ring expensive 0845 numbers when it could have used an ordinary landline number that almost everyone could ring for free as part of their bundled calls packages?
Could it be that Direct Line doesn't allow customers to e-mail it because that would be free, fast, and efficient - as opposed to having them waiting ages on over-priced phone lines?
All I'd wanted to do was e-mail a PDF of a proof of no-claims bonus to Direct Line. It would have taken seconds and cost nothing.
Yet I had to wait, listening to the most mind-numbingly repetitious music on hold, for more than a quarter of an hour before I even spoke to a human being.
No, I couldn't e-mail it, she said, because they don't ue e-mail. And no need to check the date of this posting; I am writing in the 21st Century.
The woman was happy for me to fax her, had I had a machine to hand, but couldn't accept that a scanned and e-mailed PDF of a document had exactly the same status and properties as one that had been faxed.
If Direct Line is unable to answer its phones more quickly than that, why doesn't it make its customer service line a freephone number? That would mean that instead of the customer paying for Direct Line's inefficiency, the firm would pick up the tab itself with a huge phone bill.
But I suspect that the firm would simply begin answering quickly, as it should, to avoid the costs that it doesn't mind passing on to us.
If more people complained about it, she said, Direct Line might take notice.
I know readers of this column do like a challenge, so there you are!
Jon McKnight
