THE NOTE BOOK

IT’S INFAMY FOR CAREY

Last week I got around to cancelling a Vodafone broadband contract I hadn’t used for about a year. It was for a tablet gathering dust in a cupboard, the result of a lost charger. Cancelling it proved, err, somewhat challenging, and it doesn’t bode well for Vodafone’s new management’s attempts to turn around the telco.

After trying to cancel online, I was advised to call the firm’s customer service line. After then calling Vodafone to nix the deal, I was directed to an online chat bot, the link for which was sent to my mobile; all well and good, other than the fact that the chat bot is optimised for a browser, so using the thing was enough to drive even a mild-mannered editor like myself to offer a sea of expletives in the general direction of modern technology. So infuriated was I with the whole set-up, which took more than an hour of my time, I elected to cancel my other, mobile contract with Vodafone purely out of spite. Customer service matters, and one can probably assume Vodafone’s motives for turning cancelling a contract into a Kafkaesque farce. Attempting to get a refund off British Airways falls into the same basket. The sudden arrival of the infernal self-service kiosks at places like Itsu and Leon further speak to a wider disregard for the value of the people who actually pay the bills.

By contrast look at, say, First Direct. Famed for their customer service, the phone and online-only bank continues to invest in real people; the CEO, Chris Pitt, spends hours on the floor of his call centres. It’s hardly surprising that after a brief wobble, the brand is back to being trusted and respected by customers and non-customers alike. What my trial-by-chatbot exercise with Vodafone taught me was that the telco has an awfully long way to go in its turn around.

The laws of the game or the spirit of cricket? The debate about Alex Carey’s dismissal of Johnny Bairstow yesterday will drag on and on, and should at least bring some competitive spice to this week’s Headingley Test. Carey’s move to stump Bairstow was certainly smart cricket, but it leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Sometimes in sport as in business, the damage to one’s reputation can far outweigh the shortterm gain from pushing the boundaries. Carey could ask his de facto captain Steve Smith about that.

£ Another day, another tranche of press releases abut ministers jetting off ever further afield in order to ‘strengthen trade ties’ with the rest of the world. It’s a lovely idea but it would perhaps be more worthwhile dealing with the red tape and non-tariff barriers which still tie up exporters attempting to get goods to Europe. The idea that trade with the four corners of the earth is going to replace that with our closest neighbour is for the birds.

£ Are Just Stop Oil a plant for the dirty energy industry? The reaction to the two idiots running on the pitch at Lord’s last week was similar to that of the seven or so that were arrested disrupting the Pride parade at the weekend: total apathy. Since the Metropolitan Police finally got its collective backside in gear and started to remove protestors from blocked roads, Just Stop Oil have become a sort of amusing sideshow. If they cared about fossil fuels, they’d stop their counterproductive nonsense.

TO THE SEAS, FOR YOUR BEACH READING

CAN I QUOTE YOU ON THAT?

Happy birthday dear NHS

For reasons that I can’t work out, BBC Newsnight invited a choir on to sing happy birthday to the health service. But it’s definitely not a cult.

Here’s a pub quiz question worth trying in the officewhat’s 40 foot by 8 foot by 8 and a half foot, and helped make the modern world? The answer is the humble shipping container, the workhorse of the global shipping industry. That particular part of the global economy may not feel like the obvious place to look for summer reading but two books on the industry have had me hooked over the past couple of weeks. The first, Marc Levinson’s The Box, tells the story of the container; the second, Dead in the Water by journalists Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel, is as much like a thriller as any non-fiction book I’ve ever read, attempting to get under the skin of a ship scuttling in Yemen that cost a good man his life in the investigation. They both come highly recommended.