Terra-potta Army

What an older person could wish for as their Christmas present? Peace of mind sounds like a good option. That was certainly not what Mrs J was experiencing a day before Christmas Eve!

The bad news: Camden Council has identified Mrs J's treasured plant pots as combustible goods and requested the dangerous materials to be replaced with something more sensible like terracotta.

The good news: Two independent problem-solving experts from Ealing, with no political views on Camden Council, were sent to deal with Mrs J's explosive pots. They were born late enough to navigate comfortably in a technocratic dystopia - or Camden if you prefer.

Mrs J showcased the troubleshooting experts her plastic pot army that was awaiting an upgrade into a terracotta army. She explained which plants she was planning to keep: several specimens of geranium, some bulbs, "the Irish one" (shamrock ☘️) and the 40-year-old plant from her uncle.

"How many pots do you think I need? You do this all the time, don't you?" - Mrs J.

Estimates of the pot dimensions and numbers had to be done on the spot. Mrs J had a strong argument in case Sevan and Kash wanted to ask about her recommendation about the sizes and quantities.

"I'm eighty!"

"Do you have soil and tools?" Kash enquired.

The answer was no, so more guesstimating followed. Sevan added up the items that needed to be purchased:

6 x 30cm circular terracotta pots
5 x 10l bags of compost (in theory, easy to move up the stairs and to store)
A set of carbon steel trowels and spades

After initial research, the experts chose B&Q as the supplier and attempted to place the order online. First hurdle: Mrs J's credit card didn't work when Sevan tried to pay on B&Q's website. The group decided to call the B&Q helpline and complete the order through the call centre. Second hurdle: Mrs J's landline stopped working overnight!

"It's getting worse and worse" - Mrs J.

We'll come back to that problem later. The second attempt to call B&Q was through Mrs J's mobile phone. Kash prepared the notes with the product codes and Mrs J's details for Sevan, who was making the call. Third hurdle: the call centre assistant advised that B&Q wouldn't process the payment on a non-working day and they would call Mrs J back next week after Boxing Day to complete the transaction. That was out of the question.

The team started thinking outside of the box and considered a more old-school option: going to B&Q and paying for the order in cash. Fourth hurdle: apart from the terracotta pots, how to carry 50 litres of soil from a store 2.5 km away? Mrs J's answers ranged from taking a bus, engaging her neighbour with a car, to taking her trolley. Fifth hurdle: even if transport was available, the Camden B&Q didn't have all the items in stock.

"It's getting worse and worse", observed Mrs J, "And everything happens just before Christmas!"

To prove everything was going bad at once, she started investigating her landline cable, then decided to call her provider, BT, via her phone to get help. Sevan and Kash suggested taking a step back and solving one problem at once. Eventually they found a different bank card to place the online order with. Thankfully that worked and Sevan took a photo of the order confirmation with Mrs J's mobile for reference.

Now was the time to deal with the broken landline. First, Mrs J phoned the alleged helpline number stated on her BT contract. Sixth hurdle: strangely, it was the contact to a lawyer's company. The person who picked up the phone explained their firm was getting lots of calls from BT customers due to past printing error. Luckily, the crafty lawyers found the BT helpdesk number for Mrs J. Do you think she was able to talk to BT's assistant? Think again. Seventh hurdle: the helpline process directed Mrs J to complete the rest of the flow through text messages.

"It's getting worse and worse..."

Mrs J had no clue about how to play BT's SMS game, so Kash assisted her with responding to the automated texts to get through the procedure. Eventually, a text came offering a call back from a human assistant. Kash booked the callback available in 1 minute. Mrs J picked up the phone and didn't hesitate to feedback on how difficult was to get to speak to a BT person, especially having the incorrect details on the contract.

"I called the wrong number that gave me the right number."

Mrs J reported her landline not working and booked an engineer to look at her issue the same day in the afternoon. She was a bit worried that the BT person may not show up and that she may not be able to request help again without the GoodGymers' assistance. Contrary to her concerns, Mrs J learnt quickly how to view and reply to BT's text messages on her own. When the next SMS came with a survey about customer service, she replied with a rating of 0 without any assistance!

After almost two hours of tech support, Sevan and Kash were ready to go. They promised to deal with one more technology-induced stress for Mrs J, who was worried that her intercom stopped working and the B&Q driver won't be able to let her know that her delivery has arrived. The GoodGymers used the buzzer on the way back and confirmed everything was fine on the intercom front.

It was one of those missions that may take 20 minutes or 120 minutes. Everything went according to expectations, given Murphy's law.

"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

Hopefully, with two tech issues addressed to some degree, Mrs J will have less to worry about this Christmas.