Admin stupidity

Mr Badger

Mr Badger

Mr Badger

Soldato
Joined
27 Dec 2009
Posts
11,311
It's Friday, so why not vent about any administrative process nonsensicality that you have to endure?

My humble offering: Letter advising motorbike insurance renewal arrives a week or two back. I hit a price comparison website and find it 25% cheaper and call my current broker who can't reduce their price, so I cancel the renewal and take out a new policy. A few days ago I receive a letter confirming that the renewal is cancelled and asking me to return my certificate of insurance, which is puzzling as I don't have it. Today my insurance renewal documents arrive for the cancelled policy, including the certificate of insurance, which they have sent to me, to return back to them, days after acknowledging that I had cancelled the policy :confused:

And just for giggles, the cancelled policy and the cheaper new policy I have taken out (through different brokers) turn out both to be with the same actual insurance company :confused:

And even better, the insurance company then contact me wanting to know why I have two policies on the same vehicle, requiring me to navigate their phone system, explain it all and get put on hold for ages :mad:

Has any bureaucracy proved to you recently that the world is indeed mad?
 
Phew! I thought you were about to have a go at me :(

I've experienced similar things when changing suppliers/insurers/etc... left hand not talking to the right - it is frustrating.
 
within the last 6 months, yes, and unsurprisingly to do with insurance as well.

Me: "I'd like to change the car on the policy I took out a couple of weeks ago."
Them: "That will be an increase in premiums of £££"
Me: "Well, I've just done an online quote with you and it's come out as £££ lower :confused:, are you not able to match that?"
Them: "That's for new customers only, mid-policy changes are completely different"
Me: "Ok, can I cancel my current policy then please"
Them: "Ok, can I ask why you want to cancel?"
Me: "Do I really need to explain that to you?"
Them: "<Fluff about it being illegal to have an uninsured car on the road etc.>"
Me: "That's fine"
Them: "Ok, your policy has now been cancelled, is there anything else I can help you with today?"
Me: "Yes, I'd like to take out a policy based on a web quote please..."

What a complete waste of time.
 
They love you to write down things after you've done them in my place.

"You've done that, now enter it on the spreadsheet"

How about you **** off. Sometimes I wish I was a dictator, damn democracy.
 
pitchfork said:
They love you to write down things after you've done them in my place.

"You've done that, now enter it on the spreadsheet"

How about you **** off. Sometimes I wish I was a dictator, damn democracy.
Click to expand...

To be fair, that does make perfect sense.

E.g. if I've just made a load of code changes and not bothered to document them, and then get hit by a bus tomorrow, it's going to take someone a good while to go through and figure out exactly what I've done.
 
Tesco Direct lost my order yesterday for failing to let me manually input a delivery address. I was forced to use their postcode address locator which didn't have my work address listed at all.

Only incompetence which annoyed me this week
 
I got sent 4 Qnap turbonas enclosures over the space of 3 weeks, i ordered one from our supplier. Numerous calls to CS going to a queue with no one answering and once actually hanging up on me (heard the pickup and drop) and a bouncing email contact address later we kept them and i took two.
Never said anything about it again and they never did either. 7 months now.
 
Justintime said:
I got sent 4 Qnap turbonas enclosures over the space of 3 weeks, i ordered one from our supplier. Numerous calls to CS going to a queue with no one answering and once actually hanging up on me (heard the pickup and drop) and a bouncing email contact address later we kept them and i took two.
Never said anything about it again and they never did either. 7 months now.
Click to expand...

That's just terrible customer service rather than pointless admin :p
 
JackG4 said:
Pointless admin leading to profit loss
Click to expand...

Although... equally sometimes being renowned instead for exceptional customer service can also lead to profit loss as people exploit your company's 'the customer is always right' ethos
 
After I upgraded my phone I got an invoice for it and the tariff on the website was still the full price and not the 50% off they'd agreed.

Obviously I phone Vodafone to find out why. Turns out the invoicing system can't handle the fact they invoiced me then credited it back straight away and sends an auto invoice out without the credit. The website also doesn't reflect the tariff you actually pay if it's discounted.

The girl I spoke to agreed it was ridiculous, they'd told their bosses but nothing had been done about systems that actually create calls for no reason.
 
Couple of years ago - I received an email from O2 confirming that I've started an iPhone 4S contract, and that the phone will arrive in a couple of days time. Although the email was in my name, the phone was to be sent to a London address. Note that my phone at the time was a Galaxy SII in mid-contract with Orange and I live in Stafford. So I went to the Stafford O2 shop and showed the manager my email. A few in-store phonecalls later and they reckon that someone has maliciously ordered the iPhone and told me to cancel all of my cards. A few days later, I was told that O2 typo'd the Londoner's email address by a few characters so that it ended up being my address pot luck and it went to me instead. The Londoner's order therefore turned out to be legitimate. Time somewhat wasted on both parties.
 
Haggisman said:
within the last 6 months, yes, and unsurprisingly to do with insurance as well.

Me: "I'd like to change the car on the policy I took out a couple of weeks ago."
Them: "That will be an increase in premiums of £££"
Me: "Well, I've just done an online quote with you and it's come out as £££ lower :confused:, are you not able to match that?"
Them: "That's for new customers only, mid-policy changes are completely different"
Me: "Ok, can I cancel my current policy then please"
Them: "Ok, can I ask why you want to cancel?"
Me: "Do I really need to explain that to you?"
Them: "<Fluff about it being illegal to have an uninsured car on the road etc.>"
Me: "That's fine"
Them: "Ok, your policy has now been cancelled, is there anything else I can help you with today?"
Me: "Yes, I'd like to take out a policy based on a web quote please..."

What a complete waste of time.
Click to expand...

I moved insurance companies purely because they charged me £35 admin fee to change address. I understand they have to calculate the risk for a new address but I was their customer. They were giving quotes to non-customers for free all day long.
 
I have a car insurance one..

Got a new policy with Hastings Direct a few years ago. The documentation arrived in the post as you'd expect except it was addressed to "Sir" instead of "Mr". Knowing what insurers are like (weasels) I called to explain that I was very much NOT a knight of the realm and that an error had been made by them.

"Sorry sir, it's £30 to change details"
"...but it's your error.. I'm calling to amend details which are clearly wrong"
"Policy changes will be chargeable, I'm afraid"
"...but, it's YOUR error"
"Don't worry we will honour the policy if you have an accident, I'll just make a note on your record"
"I very much doubt it.. If you're going through the trouble of making a note, can't you just amend my details?!"
"Sorry"
"Ok, I'd like to cancel the policy"
...

Long story short, they were shirty about cancelling the policy and I had to speak to them about 3 additional times as a different manager would call trying to persuade me to stay :o
 
Applied for a very high level Job and was told rather than send in CV/CL, I needed to fill in this application form electronically and e-mail it back.

Like most of these 'Application Forms', which are made by some bimbo in HR/Admin and are normally extremely poorly done in word with tables etc, rather than properly done in an editable PDF.

This one was worse, not even tables! Just text typed out using spaces/tabs to space it out to look like tabular format. Then to make it worse they draw empty text boxes around the text to make it look 'professional'.

As it was for an IT job, I decided to redo the entire application form properly with tables etc so I could enter my bits correctly, while it still looking the same as it did originally.

And because I modified the application form I got denied the job which could have been earning me over £50k p/y... I couldn't even use the original form because as soon as you entered data it messed everything up.

This is why I hate HR/Admin people, they can't do their jobs properly and when you try to help them they moan.

/rant
 
Haggisman said:
To be fair, that does make perfect sense.

E.g. if I've just made a load of code changes and not bothered to document them, and then get hit by a bus tomorrow, it's going to take someone a good while to go through and figure out exactly what I've done.
Click to expand...

That means you are not following industry best practice and doing paired programming, Test Driven Development, regular code reviews, lean ....
 
Last year when I changed car I was asked by my insurer to return my policy certificate to them as I was cancelling. I pointed out that it was an email attachment, so they asked me to print it out, then send it to them.
I further explained that I could simply print another out at will, so they asked me to forward the policy email and certificate attachment back to them so I no longer had it.
At that point I just agreed to do what they asked with my head in my hands.
 
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