What a saga....On Friday I had to speak to customer-care dept of a well known company. The lady who I spoke to, who was in Kingston-upon-Thames, was very helpful ..I think...lol.. but I could barely understand her but she sounded so pleasant and empathetic to my problem that I didn't have the heart to say I was having difficulty understanding her, which, btw..I just had to do some years ago with a customer-care Asian lady who worked for MoreThan insurance. They must have had a lot of complaints so they eventually brought all calls into their UK centres having out-sourced them to India. Re this call on Friday, I wondered if I was dealing with a scam centre that had cloned the phone number and asked her where she was speaking from and she said "Kingston" and I knew they had offices there when I looked up their phone number so it was ok.
Anyway, as much as she tried she was unable to help me and asked me where I lived. Gloucester.... and I told her the nearest retail outlet was in the Midlands. That's ok,. she said, I'll transfer you to our concierge service in Newcastle .I assumed Newcastle-upon-Tyne as opposed to Under-Lyme. Brilliant, I thought. A sigh of relief. My relief was short-lived. The lady who answered had such a heavy Geordie accent I had as much,if not more difficult understanding her.

She was also really nice to speak to .The upshot was I was sent the wrong product. So I called yesterday and spoke to a lady who didn't have an identifiable accent but she had trouble understanding what product I'd been sent. What I wanted was a Chanel product for my wife. I bought it for her last Christmas and it's just run out. The lady asked me exactly what the product was. I read from the label which was in French. I'm not good at prouncing the french language. It's 'Sublimage L' Eau de Démaqquiilage ."Is that a wine ?" she asked.
"No.It's a Chanel skin product for ladies. "Ok.. so what you're saying is that you've been sent the wrong product ? " "Yes" I was actually sent a tube of the same stuff but it was gel > oil instead of a 150ml bottle of it. Same price,though, amazingly.
She said someone would call me back which they did within the hour. He was excellent. Laughed at my travails with the language issue..said he'd lived in Newcastle a while and had got used to Geordie but had difficulty at first. I didn't have to explain anything to him about the product as he said straight off that he could see,from my order, what had happened. I'm now being sent the correct product and he said he'd throw in a few more cosmetic items as a good will gesture. I have to send the product I received back to them as it's expensive.
All's well that ends well, as they say but I did see the funny side of it all.