Saturday 23 May 2009

Letter to Hospicom, July '08

Further to a recent and infuriating experience, thought this letter may amuse others similarly outraged. Will I get my money back? Watch this space.


Dear Sir or Madam

I recently had the misfortune of spending some time in hospital (The Treatment Centre, Milton Keynes General Hospital, Bay 2, Bed 1, Thu 3rd July ’08). Unfortunately I had the further misfortune of being exposed to your Hospicom multimedia product, which not only didn’t work (depriving me of a phone, internet access, and my favourite television programme) but swallowed £6 of my money in the process of demonstrating to me that it didn’t work.

After hijacking a hapless nurse to help me massage the thing into action, we gave it up as a lost cause, and I set about finding out how to recoup my losses. I was told that a rep sometimes came in the afternoon, but I would be discharged before that, and that all I should do was to ring your number when I got home. After a few further days of recovery, this I duly did.

It galls me that, if such services must be privatized, I, as the end user, have no consumer choice – yours is the only product made available to me. Then, as a captive market, it further galls me not only that your product was so shoddy it didn’t actually work, but that it stole money from me for the privilege of watching it not work. But what really takes the biscuit is, after doing everything in my power as a consumer to find out how to recoup my losses, I am told by some computer-says-no automaton that because I can’t ‘prove’ I put £6 on a card, you will not deign to refund the money you have stolen from me.

I think by this point I don’t need to make it explicit to you that the suggestion that I, whilst enfeebled and recuperating, am trying to rip you off for the grand sum of £6, makes me very angry. Very angry indeed. And do you know what makes me even angrier? Do you know what the most grotesque thing about this is? That you, as a corporation, have made the commercial decision that, given your market is ensnared and choiceless, it is better for you to refuse to refund your dissatisfied customers than to retain customer goodwill – because if you have a monopoly, customer satisfaction or loyalty has no relevance or value to you. Given that your captive consumers are sick and powerless patients at one of the most vulnerable times of their lives, this is particularly despicable, don’t you think?

Such is your dedication to capitalism and the bottom line above all ethical considerations that perhaps you should consider diversifying – I’m sure there’s some Chinese six-year-olds that have yet to get a job, or a place of special scientific interest that hasn’t yet been drilled to smithereens for oil. I hear they’re giving out free tobacco in Africa to create the next market of addicts – if you got into that game you could generate more lung-cancer-ridden consumers for Hospicom all in one fell swoop. There you have it: vertical integration!

So – in short: Give me my money back – all £6 of it – you greedy profiteering capitalist bastards.

Thank you

Anna Berry


Also published for general edification on Facebook 11/07/08
(by the way - I did recoup my money)



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