What is customer care?

Companies, in Malta, specifically a telephone company, has the gall of calling it a premium service and charge you 95 cents for the call. I needed to know a telephone number and, as such, I called the company in question  and never got even as far as asking for the number as 45 minutes had passed and I was still without their premium service. I was kept waiting until I got fed up and cut off. Shame on them!

Which brings me to other occasions where an individual, ringing companies even of certain repute, is faced with a long wait. As is the norm, one would ask the person who finally answers why did he/she have to wait so long to answer the phone. The reply one normally gets is that they were very busy with a mountain of calls. I mean, if the norm is receiving a great quantity of calls, you must enlarge the customer care department, otherwise, the word “care” in customer care might as well not be there.

It is high time companies,  large or small, wanting to show off that they have a customer care department, ensure that it is well manned to handle traffic which is beyond the norm.

As was in a recent case, my bank boasts of a profit of millions of euros and then has the crappiest customer care on this planet. This is so amateurish in this day and age. Why should they deserve our business?

Unfortunately, we still have a great deal to learn.

David Demajo – St Julian’s

Farmers’ fields

Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

It seems that some farmers, especially in the south, will be forced to give up the arable land they’ve tilled for generations.

Some are speculating that these fields may be turned into cannabis plantations. Does this fall within the definition of ‘recreational use’?

Carmel Sciberras – Naxxar

Get it right

One would have thought that, following the extensive research he has undoubtedly carried out, Chris Barbara (November 25) would have come to terms by now with the actual meaning of an abortion. Nonetheless, he still appears to have difficulty acknowledging the fact that a genuine abortion is carried out with the exclusive intent of destroying the unborn child (or the uterus contents, as he so delicately puts it).

On the other hand, an unavoidable operation that is intended primarily to save a mother’s life, even if it inevitably leads to the death of an unborn, is another matter altogether. The entire history of Maltese jurisprudence amply demonstrates this, as I have no doubt Barbara is quite aware.

Never one to allow facts to get in the way of a homespun narrative, Barbara resorts to citing the Raymond and Grimes study, alleging that “the risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that with abortion”, completely omitting to mention that this study was deservedly rubbished by multiple peer review (Reardon et al; Gissler et al; J L Gerberding; Shadigian and Bauer…) as being methodologically invalid, relying on cherry-picked data samples in order to come up with a predetermined result. To quote one of the conclusions of the report: “Junk in, junk out.”

Indeed, the rejection of the Raymond and Grimes ‘study’ states baldly that “despite this artifice, it is an indisputable fact that all studies which employ record linkage have found that mortality rates associated with childbirth are significantly lower than those associated with abortion”.

Reading Barbara’s many statements on this issue, one could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that this situation is an everyday occurrence. It is pounded relentlessly by would-be abortionists, in the full knowledge that unceasing repetition makes it seem to occur more often than it actually does and, more importantly, once abortion is permitted under any circumstances, it will eventually, and inevitably, be allowed under all. The fact remains, however, that it is an extremely rare event, so rare that the Dublin Declaration of Maternal Health Care had this to say about it:

“As experienced practitioners and researchers in obstetrics and gynaecology, we affirm that direct abortion – the purposeful destruction of the unborn child – is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman. We uphold that there is a fundamental difference between abortion and necessary medical treatments that are carried out to save the life of the mother, even if such treatment results in the loss of life of her unborn child.

“We confirm that the prohibition of abortion does not affect, in any way, the availability of optimal care to pregnant women.”

Ivan Padovani – Naxxar

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