UPDATED: with some snaps from today.

My job, managing a team of sysadmins, DBAs and support staff for ‘a large internet retailer’ means that I get to be the lucky punter whose phone number appears on DNS WHOIS records. This is something that ICANN stipulate should always be present in WHOIS data, and as a responsible retailer, we provide a working, real number. It happens to be mine.

These details are ostensibly a ‘Technical Contact’ – supposedly used by other internet professionals to report issues and other operational problems with that particular domain name. The trouble is, I get a fair amount of non-technical calls from it. Everything from customers wanting to place orders, to returns, to complaints, to Chinese people wanting to sell us stock, to recruitment agencies wanting to sell us people. Everything. Everything, that is, except Technical issues.

It got so bad a while ago that I got our phone guy to record a polite message which gets played before the phone rings at my end, which tells callers exactly what this number is for. It even gives them our dedicated Customer Services number. This is great, and the number of ‘fake’ calls has dropped significantly, but we still get people ringing through wanting anything other than technical assistance.

For some, I guess it’s that they think they’ve found some ‘magic’ number into the company, which will bypass any form of queuing and will get their order-related problem dealt with quicker. This is wrong! We can be as sympathetic as possible with reference to any problem, but, unfortunately – ultimately – we can’t actually help. Really, we can’t. The best we can do is to transfer you to our Customer Services team, and you’ll land right at the back of the queue.

Others seem to use the line as a backdoor into the company, even saying things like “Oh, I know this is the wrong department, but could you please transfer me to your ‘X’ department” – If you actually needed that department in the first place, you’d have a number. Don’t call me, I won’t put you through.

From a frustrated customer’s point of view, I can see the logic – you ain’t getting the result you want from regular CS, and any other method is viewed as a possible other route into the company. It’s something I’ve experienced myself – with the likes of BT and Barclays. Someone’s fucked up and dropped the ball, and you want answers. The trouble is, it’s almost always a fruitless exercise – all you end up is angrier and no further on in your quest to solve whatever clusterfuck has happened.

In short, don’t do it. Please.

Ended up working a little late and got home after Aimee’s bedtime. A depressingly frequent occurrence. Today, I’ve spent only around an hour with her this morning when she got up, and for most of that, she was bouncing on the bed, and, invariably – on my head. Her energy first thing in the morning puts us both to shame, when we wake up bleary-eyed and unable to crawl out of bed in the morning. Perhaps I should take something from it, really.