[Rules p.1] Things that annoy you guys. 100 percent. Not gonna lie

My GP has blocked access to online bookings during the pandemic so its back to phoning at 8am. My record was 120-ish calls before I got through.

My local surgery has a queuing system, so you always know how many others are ahead of you while on hold. Can still take 20 minutes or so but it's not too bad. I'm pretty fortunate, my GP is ranked the 2nd best in the whole county.

My brother about 30 miles away has a complete clusterfuck of a surgery. Pot luck really.

My youngest nephew requires some medicine daily and the latest batch hasn't been available for pick-up.

Contacted the chemist - "Yes, we've requested authorisation from your GP."
Contacted the GP - "We haven't received the request."
Contacted the chemist - "Yes, we did send the authorisation."
Contacted the GP - "We haven't received the request."
Contacted the chemist - "Yes, we did send the authorisation. And we have just sent it again. Here are the email timestamps."
Contacted the GP - "We haven't received the request."
<Are you sure? Here are the timestamps...>
GP - "We haven't received the request. Oh... hold on. We're very busy. Oh. We have got it. Uhm... can you call back? Oh... we'll get to it later."

:fp:

.

JChalmers wrote:Our GP and trying to book a sodding appointment.

Went into the practice last week and asked at reception to book a appointment. "Sorry we've not got any today." I didn't expect they did so asked for one in the future. "Sorry you've got to call up at 8.30am to try and either get an appontment for that day or book one for 2 weeks time." Asked whether I could just book one for 2 weeks time or whenever the next available one is. "Sorry all the ones for 2 weeks are taken, we only open new ones up for 2 weeks time each day so you need to call at 8.30am...."

So 8.30 this morning, they only have one line and it's constantly engaged finally managed to get through this morning after 43 attempts and I've got one for this afternoon.

It shouldn't be that hard to book a sodding appointment, even if it meant getting one for three weeks time.

Wait, you can actually get in the building and speak to someone at reception?

The surgery here is all locked up, and the only way of contact is by phone.

They also disabled online booking since the pandemic began, and they don't allow people to book appointments in advance for any reason.

So here it's a case of being sat on the phone for at least 30 mins in a queue, then you have to tell reception all your problems, then you wait for an indeterminate amount of time for a phone call from either a doc or nurse, then if you're really, really lucky, you might get an appointment.

When i had a very worrying problem with possible neuralogical symptoms about 6 weeks ago, they refused to see me that day, and only gave me an appointment when i tried again two days later.

jawa_ wrote:My youngest nephew requires some medicine daily and the latest batch hasn't been available for pick-up.

Contacted the chemist - "Yes, we've requested authorisation from your GP."
Contacted the GP - "We haven't received the request."
Contacted the chemist - "Yes, we did send the authorisation."
Contacted the GP - "We haven't received the request."
Contacted the chemist - "Yes, we did send the authorisation. And we have just sent it again. Here are the email timestamps."
Contacted the GP - "We haven't received the request."
<Are you sure? Here are the timestamps...>
GP - "We haven't received the request. Oh... hold on. We're very busy. Oh. We have got it. Uhm... can you call back? Oh... we'll get to it later."

.

Yep, I had a rant about this a couple pages back. The fact that people's potentially life saving medications depend on this "system" absolutely blows my mind. There's obviously problems communicating between chemists and GPs and it's always up to the patient who has no access to this system to resolve the damn problem.

Imrahil wrote:My local surgery has a queuing system, so you always know how many others are ahead of you while on hold. Can still take 20 minutes or so but it's not too bad. I'm pretty fortunate, my GP is ranked the 2nd best in the whole county.

My brother about 30 miles away has a complete clusterfuck of a surgery. Pot luck really.

There is a queuing system at my GP but I'm assuming it can only handle x amount of calls. You can call and call (I average around 60 or 70 attempts) and it will cut you off because of the high volume of calls. Then you get lucky and are 12th in the queue and on hold for another 10-15 minutes. A couple of times I've made it to number 2 or 3 in the queue only to be dumped out of the system and have to start the whole thing again.

Outrunner wrote:
Imrahil wrote:My local surgery has a queuing system, so you always know how many others are ahead of you while on hold. Can still take 20 minutes or so but it's not too bad. I'm pretty fortunate, my GP is ranked the 2nd best in the whole county.

My brother about 30 miles away has a complete clusterfuck of a surgery. Pot luck really.

There is a queuing system at my GP but I'm assuming it can only handle x amount of calls. You can call and call (I average around 60 or 70 attempts) and it will cut you off because of the high volume of calls. Then you get lucky and are 12th in the queue and on hold for another 10-15 minutes. A couple of times I've made it to number 2 or 3 in the queue only to be dumped out of the system and have to start the whole thing again.

GP Telephone queuing systems are the equivalent of arcade crane games that are designed to drop your prize no matter how close you think you are.

Then you have the receptionists themselves. The mid-level bosses who are the ultimate arbiters of your fate as you plead your case for seeing the Doctor to them. Pray that they find you worthy of the GPs attention.

Imrahil wrote:My local surgery has a queuing system, so you always know how many others are ahead of you while on hold. Can still take 20 minutes or so but it's not too bad. I'm pretty fortunate, my GP is ranked the 2nd best in the whole county.

My brother about 30 miles away has a complete clusterfuck of a surgery. Pot luck really.

I wouldn't want to know this because it would probably irrationally annoy me that it was that close to being number one in the county.

Cuttooth wrote:
Imrahil wrote:My local surgery has a queuing system, so you always know how many others are ahead of you while on hold. Can still take 20 minutes or so but it's not too bad. I'm pretty fortunate, my GP is ranked the 2nd best in the whole county.

My brother about 30 miles away has a complete clusterfuck of a surgery. Pot luck really.

I wouldn't want to know this because it would probably irrationally annoy me that it was that close to being number one in the county.

Cuttooth wrote:
Imrahil wrote:My local surgery has a queuing system, so you always know how many others are ahead of you while on hold. Can still take 20 minutes or so but it's not too bad. I'm pretty fortunate, my GP is ranked the 2nd best in the whole county.

My brother about 30 miles away has a complete clusterfuck of a surgery. Pot luck really.

I wouldn't want to know this because it would probably irrationally annoy me that it was that close to being number one in the county.

Nah, the second best has something to aim for and will be pushing to get to the top.

The number one will be complacent and that will lead to a horrendous strawberry float up.

The various instances of struggling to order repeat medication and actually getting the right or sensible amounts are so vast it would take me half a day to account for them so I will just say that yes, the system is utterly borked and I sure as hell have no strawberry floating clue how to, nevermind any capacity or capability whatsoever to fix it.

YouTube

Green Gecko wrote:The various instances of struggling to order repeat medication and actually getting the right or sensible amounts are so vast it would take me half a day to account for them so I will just say that yes, the system is utterly borked and I sure as hell have no strawberry floating clue how to, nevermind any capacity or capability whatsoever to fix it.

My chemists kept giving me 4 months worth of one of my medications every time i ordered my other meds - where they would give me 4 weeks worth. Ended up with enough meds for around a year and a half by the time i stopped it :lol:

My doctor has the on hold thing too, but if you can't get an appointment the doctor will try to call you in the next couple of days if they get chance.

I know I'm lucky with my doctors. My partners doctor never seems to have any on the day appointments available, never mind having having one within the next 2 weeks.

Youtube auto translating video titles from Japanese to English. I've got Japanese as one of my languages in my settings and even so it insists on translating some of the titles. I wouldn't care, but some of the translations are awful and I want to know what the original title of the video is and I can't get to it for some dumb reason. It doesn't even do it to everything, just some.

Having to speak to someone to cancel a contract. Been on hold to Sky forever and gave up yesterday after an hour.

Companies over a certain size should either be fined for not maintaining swift response times on calling them or should allow for an automated process. It's 2022. They only reason they're making me speak to someone is so they can try to change my mind which I know I'm not going to do. It's frustrating to say the least.

Tomous wrote:Having to speak to someone to cancel a contract. Been on hold to Sky forever and gave up yesterday after an hour.

Companies over a certain size should either be fined for not maintaining swift response times on calling them or should allow for an automated process. It's 2022. They only reason they're making me speak to someone is so they can try to change my mind which I know I'm not going to do. It's frustrating to say the least.

The law should be, if they let you sign up with an online automated process, then they have to let you cancel the same way.

Moggy wrote:
Tomous wrote:Having to speak to someone to cancel a contract. Been on hold to Sky forever and gave up yesterday after an hour.

Companies over a certain size should either be fined for not maintaining swift response times on calling them or should allow for an automated process. It's 2022. They only reason they're making me speak to someone is so they can try to change my mind which I know I'm not going to do. It's frustrating to say the least.

The law should be, if they let you sign up with an online automated process, then they have to let you cancel the same way.

Indeed.

While I'm on hold they're also telling me all the wonderful things I can do online with my account like upgrade :fp:

Tomous wrote:
Moggy wrote:
Tomous wrote:Having to speak to someone to cancel a contract. Been on hold to Sky forever and gave up yesterday after an hour.

Companies over a certain size should either be fined for not maintaining swift response times on calling them or should allow for an automated process. It's 2022. They only reason they're making me speak to someone is so they can try to change my mind which I know I'm not going to do. It's frustrating to say the least.

The law should be, if they let you sign up with an online automated process, then they have to let you cancel the same way.

Indeed.

While I'm on hold they're also telling me all the wonderful things I can do online with my account like upgrade

I had this issue with BT when I wanted to cancel when I moved, they did everything they could to try and sell me a worse service than I'm currently getting for a higher cost before finally letting me just cancel even after me saying countless times I wasn't interested.

Qikz wrote:
Tomous wrote:
Moggy wrote:
Tomous wrote:Having to speak to someone to cancel a contract. Been on hold to Sky forever and gave up yesterday after an hour.

Companies over a certain size should either be fined for not maintaining swift response times on calling them or should allow for an automated process. It's 2022. They only reason they're making me speak to someone is so they can try to change my mind which I know I'm not going to do. It's frustrating to say the least.

The law should be, if they let you sign up with an online automated process, then they have to let you cancel the same way.

Indeed.

While I'm on hold they're also telling me all the wonderful things I can do online with my account like upgrade

I had this issue with BT when I wanted to cancel when I moved, they did everything they could to try and sell me a worse service than I'm currently getting for a higher cost before finally letting me just cancel even after me saying countless times I wasn't interested.

The Sky agent was actually alright when I finally got through but in the past I've just repeated "no thank you, I'd like to cancel" until they give up.

We just rejoined Sky :toot:

[Rules p.1] Things that annoy you guys. 100 percent. Not gonna lie

Who is online

Affiliates