Literacy and Manners
It’s easy to carp about Britain, but there really are things that get up your nose these days. Two in particular: literacy, and manners.
It is perhaps no coincidence that these are connected.
Occasionally I buy books from Amazon UK. The service is reasonably efficient – the books I order are delivered when they say they will be and the carriage charge is no more than one would expect. So far so good.
However, there is one matter, one word, or rather the lack of one word, which rankles.
When a book is about to be sent out you get an e-mail informing you of this fact, but what does the subject line say? This is what it says: “Your Amazon.co.uk order has dispatched…” (sic)
Now wait a minute. My Amazon.co.uk order has dispatched? Dispatched what? Oh, I see, they mean my Amazon.co.uk order has been dispatched. Then why don’t they say so? Obviously, they don’t realise they are making a grammatical error.
After searching around on their website I tracked down someone not in Customer Relations, but in Executive Customer Relations, no less, and politely pointed out the incorrect wording and suggested they change it.
What do they do? Thank me for drawing attention to their embarrassing error and hang their heads in shame as they scuttle away to their computer to add the missing word? No, they do not. This is the reply I received:
Dear Mr. Symonds
Thank you for taking the time to contact Amazon.co.uk with your comments on our dispatch email.
We value this kind of customer feedback, as it helps further our efforts to provide the best possible service.
However we do not have any future plans to change our email heading and I hope that this does not discourage you from placing orders with us in the future.
Thank you for your interest.
Best Regards
(Name)
Executive Customer Relations
So I wrote again:
Thank you for your message, which I find most surprising.
You say you value this kind of customer feedback, yet when I point out a simple but glaring grammatical error the correction of which requires merely the insertion of one word, you say “we do not have any future plans to change our email heading”.
Will you please tell me why this is.
Frankly, your current illiterate e-mail heading does discourage me from placing future orders with you.
Perhaps you would reconsider the matter.
Etc.
To this, I received the following reply:
I am sorry to hear that our dispatch email may discourage you from placing future orders with us however as I previously mentioned we do not have any plans to change this. I have passed your suggestion to the relevant department for consideration.
I apologise if this decision causes you any disappointment however I am unable to enter into any further discussion in relation to this.
Regards
(Name)
Executive Customer Relations
It could be considered an impertinence to refuse to discuss this matter further with a customer, should he wish to do so.
Note how the writer does not apologise for allowing an illiterate e-mail to be sent to the buying public, which is what she (for it is a woman) should to do if she had any sense or decency, but instead says that she “apologises” if this decision causes me any “disappointment”. How kind of her to offer her sympathy with this meaningless statement.
It is said that the attitude of shopkeepers to customers in three countries differs thus:
In America the customer is always right. In Japan the customer is God. And in Britain the customer is a damn nuisance.
Yes, we know that, but what has it got to do with medicine?
Patience, please. All will be revealed in next month’s exciting installment!
©Gabriel Symonds, February 2011