Sir, - Peter Gaughan (July 29th), bemoans the fact that Eircom will no longer accept payments in person at its Telecom centres. It is not the only large corporation to fly in the face of its customers. I recently had a most peculiar conversation with an Allied Irish Banks official regarding the decision to no longer accept Visa payments in-branch to be electronically transferred, by "swiping" the credit card, to Visa headquarters - a procedure which I found particularly useful, enabling me to complete my transaction during a lunch break, and enabling me to use my maximum interest-free period, without fear of straying into the penalty time-zone.
This state-of-the-art, convenient, 21st-century practice - unique, apparently, to AIB - is now to be discontinued. Why? "It led to large queues forming at lunchtime to pay their bills, sir. This inconvenienced customers, so it was decided to discontinue the system in order to cut down on queuing." But surely, the very presence of a queue of customers, cheques and credit cards in hand, was proof in itself that the system was working, and the customers considered themselves to be anything but inconvenienced? Apparently not.
Clearly, the old maxim that the customer is always right does not fit in with modern managerial thinking where the general public is concerned. Can we now look forward to the day when Aer Lingus decides to cancel flights because there are too many people at the check-in, or the local supermarket closes its doors to avoid lengthy queues at the checkouts?
Curiouser and curiouser, cried Alice. - Yours, etc.,
D.K. Henderson, Castle Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin 3.