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ONCE, the customer was always right. I remember it. I was both customer and deliverer of goods to customer (in the form of newspapers) and I distinctly remember that the customer was always right. The customer was often a complete pain in the arse, but the rightness was beyond question.

Now, our world has been improved for us by wealthy businessmen who, as the Tory Party reminded the 24% of you who voted for them at the last election, have our best intentions at heart.

And the customer? The customer is always right. Right in the smelly brown stuff. And as far as businessmen are concerned, as soon as the customer has crawled exhausted from the ordure and handed over his or her hard-earned, the customer can fuck right off.

This is our fault.

In the years that we should have been hounding businessmen whose faiths were in centralisation, call centres and redundancies by ramming flaming brands right up their pin-striped jacksies, we were instead sitting slack-jawed in front of EastEnders, a thinvslick of drool running down several of our chins as we checked in the Daily Mail or the Sun what it is we should be thinking about.

Thus it is that any issue in which you have to deal with a large company, from a delivery agency to a bank, from an energy provider to British Fucking Telecom, is met with unconcern and incompetence on their part and stress, anger and strange dreams of flaming brands on the part of the customer.

Let me tell you about a retail experience dripping with irony.

The Saturday of the Whitsun weekend, a mobile phone had made it as far as Parcel Force’s depot in Plymouth, on its way to me – for as you know, I like to surf the zeitgeist and am at one with technology.

Three days later, by the Tuesday, this phone, which will surf the internet, play me music, take photographs, send texts and e-mails, tell me what stars are in the sky above me and direct me wherever I want to go in the world, this marvel of modern communication, had made it as far as a van.

Beside themselves with excitement at this achievement, Parcel Force texted to say that the phone would be delivered that very day, Tuesday.

Reading the text, we sighed and made a mental note to phone them on Thursday to find out why it hadn’t been delivered.

Naturally, we heard nothing more at all. No text to say it wouldn’t be delivered after all, no update on progress, no estimated time of arrival, no information, no courtesy, nothing, nada, zilch. The customer can go and get stuffed.

On Thursday I chased the matter. The retailer didn’t know what was going on. Parcel Force were baffled. The phone had been on the van for three days now – Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday – but was no nearer completing its 25-mile odyssey of pain from Plymouth to me.

On Friday, I lost my temper, as I always have to. In the office, strong men (well, Brother Pictures) and strong women (certainly Sister McFeisty) quailed. A supervisor was brought to me electronically. The driver, apparently, wanted to go home. I wondered whether he might care to deliver me my phone on the way. This, of course, was a very difficult matter. Eventually, we established that he could leave it at a local post office, if he could manage the tricky business of fetching it out of the back of the van. That evening, nine days after it was ordered, the phone and I had an emotional first date. But I was too exhausted to go all the way.

Our next task is to endeavour to ascend the Everest that is Co-op Energy, from which we have our electricity. On May 5^th they took our usual direct debit from the bank – but helped themselves to an additional £92.13 in a second transaction. Our reaction was not concern, nor anger, nor bewilderment. Our reaction was: ‘Oh shit. We’re going to have to spend months on the phone sorting this one out.’

Sure enough, more than a month later we have no answer and we have no £92.13. We sent an e-mail asking why they’d taken £92.13 from us. Co-op replied, telling us they were launching a new customer service and billing system. We e-mailed again asking why they’d taken £92.13 from us. Co-op replied, telling us how to go about making a payment. I rang, got into the phone queue and then stuck the phone on loudspeaker and got on with my work. 32 minutes later I heard a human voice. ‘Hello’, I said, cautiously, wondering what the next catch might be. ‘You’re through to the overflow system! Would you like to arrange a call back?’

Well, we’re all experienced at this now, aren’t we? Yes and No were not options. ‘How long?’, I asked, wearily. ‘We will call back within seven working days’, said the voice on the end, shame dripping from every syllable. Well, it was either shame or total disinterest.

I confidently expect an emotional reunion with our £92 and 13 pence some time in November. We will get there, as we do with all these experiences, but the time and work involved is staggering. This is the great triumph of the post-Thatcher age – the job of delivering a decent service is left to the customer, enabling those businessmen who care so much about us to sack as many staff as they like.

We always get some form of payback, and will do again this time – we went through a period where we didn’t pay a full phone bill to British Fucking Telecom for several months, such was the scandalous inadequacy of their service for which they kept apologising with compensation or rebates.

But none of that is the point. The misery of the new world is the point. Well, the customer may not be right, or cared for, or bothered about, or treated with courtesy, or even provided with anything even slightly resembling a decent service any more, but this customer is right about one thing: the bastards should be required by law to have staff to deliver the service they say they are selling, and if they haven’t they should be criminalized. Bastards.

Any decent society would have a requirement on companies to provide a decent service – and hey! You wouldn’t know it by reading the Daily Mail or the Sun or voting for the Tory Party, but our society has just that: The Companies Act 2006 includes nothing about maximising profit but requires directors – who are legally obliged by the Act – to run firms for the benefit of members as a whole, including employees, and taking into account the impact of the company’s operations on the community and the environment.

That must be the least enforced law since the old dog licence.

Surfer

I don’t know how many times I have to tell you I’m surfing the zeitgeist, but I noticed my piece about the pointlessness of scapegoating the idiot at the top of Fifa for its endemic corruption was the first in a long list of pieces to reflect on this during the week. Radio 4’’s Thinking Aloud, on Friday, had a particularly interesting discussion on the human need to place blame. There were also very interesting points made on the way blame is used to focus attention on one small aspect of a problem, while conveniently leaving the problem itself to continue – this latter point being particularly popular among politicians, of course.

Silver surfer

How very lovely to hear from Brother Stents again! At his age, one doesn’t like to enquire about a lengthy absence in case there has been any sadness, but I’m delighted to see that the old duffer us still with us, in body if not in mind, judging by his comments. I fear he and our Stormin’ Brother must be getting along famously, over there on the Dark Side. No matter. It’s great to know that, just like the poor, Brother Stents is always with us.