📙 Part 2: Describe a complaint that you made and were satisfied with the result

This episode's vocabulary

To resolve (verb) - to solve or end a problem or difficulty.

Annoyance (noun) - the feeling or state of being annoyed.

To sort something/someone out (phrasal verb) - to deal successfully with a problem, a situation, or a person who is having difficulties.

String (noun) - a series of related things or events.

Frustrating (noun) - making you feel annoyed or less confident because you cannot achieve what you want.

Ultimately (adverb) - finally, after a series of things have happened.

Questions and Answers

R: Well, frankly, I wonder if people are ever satisfied when they complain. I mean, even after they get the whole thing resolved because you have to maintain your annoyance over a significant period of time. And no one likes that, do they? However, a while back, I complained to a company called Network Rail about their unclear wording in a letter and managed to get that sorted out, which was quite good.

To say more about when it happened. Well, it was just a little while back, and a letter arrived at my home explaining there would be works on the line nearby. There's a railway line that runs outside of my house. Since it's usually quite a quiet area. And I like going for walks near the tracks, it's sort of a big deal. And it was kind of them to let us know. However, the dates on the letter didn't match what was on the calendar, which was confusing, and they were taking ages to reply to a call being made about it. So I decided to post about it on Instagram and basically shame them into answering. When it comes to who I complained to, actually, we spoke to a string of people, including the social media team and the customer service people, which is not, well, at least one of those is not the normal set of people that you would expect talk to about this kind of thing.

In greater detail about what I complained about specifically, the dates were over three days in April. But which ones was hard to work out, because on the letter it said Wednesday to Friday, but the actual calendar dates given looked like Tuesday to Thursday. So we called the company and they asked us to email and it took forever to get back to us. So like I say I post something on, well, I posted something on Instagram. And the social media team passed us on to the customer service advisors. And then on to the customer service managers, eventually It was a bit frustrating really, because they could have just looked at the dates and checked them with the works team. And this would have taken about five minutes in a phone call. I mean total lack of joined-up thinking on their part. However, we did eventually get an answer out of them. After a week, which is a really unacceptable time to wait for an answer about something so trivial.

To explain further why I was satisfied with the result, well, we did ultimately get a reply. But the hoops we had to jump through to get there were insane. To this day, I still don't get why it was so hard just to check this information but such is life.

M: And do you often complain about things?

R: Only when other people complain? Generally. The irony is not lost on me.