Ansaphone blunder leaves Condor customers confused

Monday 19 December 2016

An ansaphone message warning about call centre delays caused by severed telecoms cables caused confusion for Condor customers last week when it continued to play days after cables were repaired.

Three of Jersey’s key telecoms cables to the UK – owned by JT, Sure and BT – were cut in late November, after a ship dragged its anchor along the seabed in the English Channel.

Engineers had expected repairs to take up to three weeks, but the cables were repaired in just two.

Nonetheless, days after the fix, Condor customers were still greeted with the following ansaphone message:

“Due to current issues regarding communication cable failures in the Channel Islands, this is affecting some of our call centres. You may therefore experience some delays in contacting our reservations team. We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.”

But, as Condor explained to Express, they ferry provider was able to work around the problem so that despite the warning message, customers were not seriously affected:

"As soon as this occurred, our internal IT support team were able to divert all incoming phone calls to either our Jersey or Guernsey port offices to Poole. So, anybody ringing our local offices would speak to someone on the mainland, and we would then aim to transfer them to the correct person or department in the islands," a spokesperson said.

"During this time, our reservations numbers were not affected and we did not miss any calls."

With the telecoms links to Jersey and Guernsey now fully restored, Condor assures customers that the ansaphone message will now be changed.