Just got a call from a charity I donate to on a regular basis. I've been giving to them each month for over a year. It was a call from a nice enough chap in a call centre, who thanked me for my regular donations and asked me what had made me start giving this regular gift. I said it was because I liked the animal I was giving money to (elephants) and wanted to help them. He was a nice man and he said that that was a good straightforward reason.

So then he started to tell me a little about the work the charity are doing with elephants, and it was ok, although quite long, and it was obviously coming off a script as it wasn't really up to much interrogation, and it had that feeling.. that feeling where you know you are going to be asked for something... it was all building up to it...

So he told me a little story about what the charity are doing with elephants, which was slightly confusing - it was about people protecting their crops from elephants by planting chillies around the fields, I wasn't immediately clear on who this was helping - it didn't instantly seem to be helping my elephants but he explained that they needed to come up with ways that people and elephants can live alongside each other... which I agreed was a good thing...

Then he told me about another scheme, with tame elephants policing crops and stopping wild elephants from getting to them... again, I'm not sure... what about the poor hungry wild elephants? It was hard to take it all in on the phone in the middle of the office, but it didn't sound quite what I'd imagined was happening.

Anyway, then he thanked me again for the money I gave, and clarified the amount (it is only £2.50 a month) and asked if I was able to help a bit more by increasing that to £5 a month. Now this is double what I currently give, and although the update on the elephants / chillies / policing stories had been quite nice, they hadn't made me feel massively enthusiastic. It was a bit more like I was making it hard for the elephants to get food.

So I said no, I didn't think I will increase at this point, and he sounded disappointed, and said 'oh, ok, well you see there is so much more for us to do to protect the elephants...how about £4?'. But it wasn't about the money, more about what they were doing with it. And it was kind of annoying of him to be disappointed I was not wanting to give more. I still give. So I asked if the man knew if my money was going directly to elephant projects, and he didn't know (he referred me to the web site), thanked me again for my contribution and was gone pretty fast.

It had all started so well. A nice thank you call. But the information I got has raised more questions than I had 10 minutes ago.. does anyone have a good experience of an upgrade call?

Dawn Howarth