Dispatches from a Dystopian Ingelish Xmas

It's beginning to look a lot like a Victorian dystopian Christmas!

Googling for the phone number of Sycamore House (my local NHS health facility) it turned out the number on their website is wrong (as it was three weeks ago!), so their answer thingy told me to call 01578 5838 13428. A MEDICAL FACILITY, fer Chrissake!

I needed to check the hour of my appointment with Quay Gardens (a mental health facility near me, yeah, you've guessed: all this is driving me bonkers!), so I looked it up on that Google. Strange: no phone number on their contact page?!?

So I called Sycamore House and 5 menus and half a symphony later a nice lady gave me the number 0954 35757 475.

So I called 0954 35757 475:

Tuuut... tuuut... tuuut... [normal ringtone, then:] tut.tut.tut...Krsssshh.... (dead)

Try again:

Tuuut... tuuut... tuuut... [normal ringtone, then:] tut.tut.tut...Krsssshh.... (dead)

So Quay Gardens (a NHS mental health facility) are self-sabotaging their own telephone system, presumably because of Covid/Omicron/G-d only knows...

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And the rot may not be limited to the public sector.

I've banked with NATWEST for over 20 years, had a mortgage, 2 business accounts and a hefty business loan with them.

Now I wanted to apply for another business account, primarily to take advantage of their advertised business account overdraft.

So email address and created PW at hand, I applied.

Funnily enough, apart from one 'verify your email address' style response I got nothing.

Now every time I visit that site it tells me I'm logged out and 'please login'. Doing so then leads to nowhere.

A Natwest Business Account application 'in progress' [COUGH...]

NATWEST doesn't accept applications anymore and fails to tell (potential and actual, like me) customers about that. Strange for a Company that informs their entire G-ddamn customer base when their CEO has parted with a small fart!

They have of course form in that department. At the time of the 1st Lockdown(TM) a businessman appeared on the Beeb. He had opened a Business Account with cards and everthang, only to find two days later they'd cancelled his account and card and not a nairy peep from NW, like a text message or somfink! That business crashed into the floor before it had learned to even glide...

And the reason for all of this? NW fearing to be inundated with bounce-back-loan requests! So much for the 'Bank of small business!'...

And oh and wait. While I went inbranch asking (vaingloriously of course) about a NW business account and as the Droid said the magic words 'apply online', she gave me a card of the 'BUSINESS TEAM AND CLUBS AND SOCIETIES' (huh?) with a number, which I'll call. If the word 'online' is muttered by anyone but me I'll SCREAM!

Note: for privacy reasons names and phone numbers have been changed (except for NW because it's in the public sphere)