Call Centre Chaos

We want you to threaten to cancel your policy.

Ever since Brexit, if you want to take your car abroad you need to have a green card to prove you have valid insurance. It used to be that your certificate of insurance would be enough, but everything has changed now.

Green cards are called green cards because they need to be printed on special green paper. This means that you can't call up and say "I'm going to France in 6 hours I need a green card" because there is no way it's going to be printed and posted to you in time. It can take up to two weeks, and there is absolutely nothing anyone in car insurance can do to make the postal service work faster.

Once Covid hit and people were being stranded abroad due to border closures and quarantine processes, the car insurance industry (in Europe anyway) decided they would accept emergency green cards that had been emailed to customers and printed on white paper.

You are still able to get a pdf green card sent to you if you are already abroad or traveling within the next few days, but these are also not instantaneous and can take up to 48 hours to be made.

There are only a few people who are able to make green cards this way, and they all have to be made from scratch. Honestly it's a miracle we can get them out within 2 days based on the number of requests I've had to put in.

Me - "You get told the same thing every year because the same thing is still true every year.

What do you mean nothing has changed? It's an entirely new year, which means the insurance market has probably changed massively from last year. Your car is a year older, which means it doesn't have any of the newest safety features that the newer models have, and replacement parts might be scarce seeing as they don't make that kind of car anymore so it's gonna be pricier to fix if you make a claim."

Well sir, here's what happened:

You uploaded a heap of crap to the website.

Why on earth did you provide 3 different documents, all from different years and different companies? Only one of them was the right one, only one showed 3 years of NCD.

If you wanted the 3 years, all you had to do was provide proof of the 3 years. None of this "I have a document from 2 years ago that shows I had 1 year and here's one from last year that shows I have one year from an entirely different insurance provider. Oh and here's the one that actually says I have 3 years and it's the most recent one, but I'm going to bury it under all this other irrelevant BS."

All these Dudley Dursleys emailing in, "but last year, last year my price was...!" Well this year it's not.

I was absolutely psyched to not have to speak to anyone for my full shift, because honestly I don't say much usually and talking to stupid people for 8 hours a day was actually physically straining my voice and making my throat hurt.

Turns out two of the three campaigns I now work for are online only, and one of them offers limited phone support. Limited like they need to put their policy number in to the phone to get through to a person and if they aren't in their renewal window the phone literally tells them they don't qualify for phone support and to go online before hanging up on them.

So honestly, I'm happy with that. These customers are generally 50% more pleasant to deal with than my last department, and there are soo many less calls to do in a day so I'm not hurting myself.

The only problem is that even though we are only online, all three campaigns still sometimes actively encourage you to call the customer yourself.

Now in some cases I understand, things like deceased clients. I have no problem calling you up to say hey, here are your options. What would you like to do so you can focus on more important shit?

But we're also supposed to call anyone who makes a complaint straight away. And to that I say fuck no, this is exactly what I was running from when I left my previous job and you can't make me.

My manager is helping me with my issues so that I can pass all my stuff and get more money, so that is also a bonus of this job 😅

Finally, you're supposed to call the customer if they email in 3 times about the same thing.

Now, I understand where this is coming from, but most of the time the customer only emails 3 times because they're not answering our questions.

Seriously, there's always an email that I pull that says nothing but "I'm having issues please help".

So we email back and say "sorry to hear that, how can we help?"

And they come back with "call me."

And we say "sorry, we're online only. If you need to make a change do this, if you need to check something do that, if it involves this other thing go here."

And then they come back with "just call me."

BITCH NO.

But by that point they've emailed in 3 times and we're supposed to call them regardless. And you don't understand my seething resentment at having to cater to your inability to ask a fucking question by email.

Don't even get me started on the dicks that want to change their car but won't give you any details. Like, we're asking all these questions for a reason. We would not be asking them if we did not require the answers in order to insure your fucking car.

Now we don't insure vans, so the very first thought that runs through my head is what kind of car do you have that can fit a bed and a sink in it?!

My second thought is that even if this wasn't a camper before it certainly is now, and we don't insure campers. We don't even let people change the colour of their wheels, never mind add living quarters.

So yes, this will change your insurance.

To an entirely different insurance provider.

And you'll have to pay us a cancellation fee for your trouble.

You can absolutely do this - if you pay on the day your policy starts.

I have now had multiple emails from customers asking why we've already taken a payment for their policy when it doesn't start until *the end of the month*.

The answer to that is:

You entered your card details and hit pay.

It really is that simple.

If you buy a chicken on Thursday you will pay for it on Thursday, despite the fact you won't cook it until Sunday.

Colleague - Hi, sure, it's this much. This includes Insurance Premium Tax at 12%.

Customer - No, I know about the IPT. I mean I need an actual breakdown of it because *something about tax and an accountant*.

Cue a lot of back and forth of us going, sorry what is it you need? This is the cancellation fee based on when you cancel your policy, what else do you need?

Then the email chain gets to me. And I see that she wants a detailed breakdown of why the cancellation fee is the price it is.

Why on Earth anyone would think we have that kind of information is beyond me. That's just the price, we read it off a screen and do as we're told.

Me - I'm sorry, there is no further breakdown. That's the price, that's the tax. You agreed to this when you took out your policy. Any further information on how we price things is classed as business sensitive information which we are not at liberty to disclose.

I never heard anything back, but I really don't see why she would need that kind of information or why her accountant would need that kind of information.

Now, see, the thing is... How do you know we clocked you at 101mph?

Our cancellation notices only say things like "going over 90 in a 60" and don't give an exact speed.

So either you know how fast you were going, or it does tell you in the black box app.

Either way, if you're claiming it's broken it's not up to us to fix it so here's the number for that company and have a nice day.

So an email comes in, which basically says this:

"My son is a good driver and he's been working hard to keep his driving score high. You've sent him a letter saying that you will cancel his policy in seven days. Please don't punish him, it was me who was driving his car as I can do that on my insurance. I had a work emergency and took my son's car. Please don't punish him, for it was I who was speeding."

I gave the usual reply, that it's unfortunate but it's stated in the T&C's that the black box can't different between drivers and all trips contribute to the driving score.

I think that's the end of it, but he comes back again.

"Why are you punishing him when he wasn't even driving!? I had a work emergency and took his car, I'm not even named on his insurance. Isn't he supposed to get three warnings before you cancel his insurance? My son is a good boy, don't cancel his insurance."

And I'm like... dude. I tried to be polite, but what kind of "work emergency" means you have to drive at 52 miles per hour in a 30 zone?

So I start quoting the T&C's at him:

It's the policyholders responsibility to ensure that anyone who drives their car complies with the terms of the insurance.

All trips contribute to the driving score regardless of who's driving.

Major speeding offences result in immediate cancellation with seven days notice.

You only get warnings if it's a minor speeding offence.

A major speeding offence includes going over 45mph in a 30mph zone, which you were definitely doing.

In my new department, we get to verify people's NCD ourselves instead of sending it to a dedicated NCD team.

Now it does work differently from my last job, because we only do personal, single vehicle car insurance. No vans, no company policies, only one car per policy. We also don't accept NCD proof from vans, motorcycles or company cars, and only a limited number of foreign NCD.

The things I have seen, both from customers and other companies:

An introductory paragraph from the front of someone's renewal that said "In this document you will find your proof of NCD". They only sent a picture of that paragraph.

A guy sent in 5 separate pages as proof of NCD. They were from 4 separate companies for four different vehicles. One of them was a company policy and four years old. None of them were for the same vehicle he was insuring with us. All of them were for 1 or 2 years. He was trying to get 6 years. We cannot add NCDs together.

A customer sent in proof of NCD for 13 years. There was nothing wrong with it. She responded to our email confirmation with "I disagree. If you look at the date I should actually have 14 years." The document was from 6 months ago, so she had earned another year with that insurance company. We don't just add another year or two to your NCD if it's an old document.

They advertised it as online only, which is exactly what I'm looking for. Turns out that wasn't the whole truth, but that's a story for another day.

The new department I'm in actually handles 3 different insurance companies, and one of them offers Telematics policies.

Black box insurance.

17 year olds trying to pretend that they were not going 103mph down the motorway at 3am.

I look at the policy and see that the previous agent he spoke to did, in fact, record what the online price should be and it's what he paid.

So I tell him the price he paid is correct.

He then says that he is looking at an email which says his price should be £10 less. I check all the documents we've sent him and go into the policy itself to confirm that no, he has paid the right price and he is not due a £10 refund.

The guy just will not let it go. He tries to get my email address to send me this email he supposedly has, but to be quite honest he's being a dick and I'm not giving him my contact information.

So I tell him as a goodwill gesture I will give him this £10 he so desperately wants.

"Finally, couldn't you have done this 10 minutes ago?"

Umm, excuse me?!

"Have you learned anything from this?"

Abso-fucking-loutly not.

You do not speak to me this way when I'm giving you a refund you're not even due. Let me be very clear that the only reason I'm giving you this is that the customers have been getting more and more disgusting to deal with recently and my mental health can't take it. This was supposed to shut you up and get you away from me, not give you permission to lecture me.

When I tell him not to speak to me that way as I'm finding it quite upsetting, he starts in on "goodwill gestures are supposed to resolve upset not cause it, I hope you learned something."

I really wish I could just take that fucking money back off him.

Unfortunately I started crying on the phone and only managed to stutter out when the refund would be with him and then mute myself until he hung up.

I don't usually drink on a Thursday night but by God did a couple of cans save me.

"My name is Doe and my loo is blocked!"

I figured I must have misheard her, so I asked her to repeat herself.

"My loo! The toilet, it's blocked!"

"I'm sorry, you've actually called through to Company Car Insurance..."

"Oh!" She said. "I meant to call my home insurance. Bye!"

And I'm like... do home insurance providers deal with that kind of thing often? Do customers just call up and start yelling "the loo, the loo!" without even a hello?

Me - "Premium cover? Sir this is our standard policy. You have no optional extras."

Customer - "It says the policy is premium!"

Me - "Sir the policy premium is the price of your policy, that's what the price of insurance is called."

Customer - "That's not the definition. If you Google premium it won't say anything about insurance."

Me - *Googles the word premium*