A review by stackwanderer
Customer Service by Bruce Benderson, Benoît Duteurtre
4.0
Another great pick from Melville House's Contemporary Art of the Novella Series. Duteurtre is a French music critic and writer. Here, he focuses his satiric wit on the ever-more-powerful and interconnected business world.
Set in present times, the author describes a world in which corporations have infiltrated every move that their customers make - even when those customers have no idea they are even buying the company's product.
A global telecom company, with the mysterious "Leslie Delmare" as Director of Customer Service, is happy to help the narrator replace his beloved smartphone, which was tragically left in the back of a cab. Of course, there's a price. Not only must he pay for his new phone, and new service, he most also continue to pay for the lost phone service until the contract runs out. This is only the first of many incidents that lead him to a simple conclusion. Companies are attracting customers at cut-rate prices, locking them into unbreakable contracts, and then charging them for the most minor infraction of the rules. This creates a new source of income:
[W]aiting time had been transformed into an economic agent and source of profits.
See the full review on my blog: Wandering in the Stacks
Set in present times, the author describes a world in which corporations have infiltrated every move that their customers make - even when those customers have no idea they are even buying the company's product.
A global telecom company, with the mysterious "Leslie Delmare" as Director of Customer Service, is happy to help the narrator replace his beloved smartphone, which was tragically left in the back of a cab. Of course, there's a price. Not only must he pay for his new phone, and new service, he most also continue to pay for the lost phone service until the contract runs out. This is only the first of many incidents that lead him to a simple conclusion. Companies are attracting customers at cut-rate prices, locking them into unbreakable contracts, and then charging them for the most minor infraction of the rules. This creates a new source of income:
[W]aiting time had been transformed into an economic agent and source of profits.
See the full review on my blog: Wandering in the Stacks