This week I have spent a small portion of time tackling issues with my mother’s telephone line. If you have been paying attention you will know that she lives in the arse end of nowhere with my frail stepdad. Her phone line went down on Tuesday 17th September and she used up most of her PAYG minutes expensively trying to get through to MyPostOffice‘s customer services, which (as I can personally confirm) is not actually possible. Yesterday the good Dr Pockless and I attempted to raise a twitterstorm, and the PO’s twitterpeople responded pretty quickly promising to escalate the matter to their telecoms people. Later that evening (as we continued to tweet) she eventually had a call promising her an engineer would call today (Friday). We can only hope and pray that she hasn’t just let the handset battery run down.
Meanwhile the Miliman promised in his speech to freeze energy prices, and Lyle blogged a lot about his own favourite utility merchants. Grab your drinks and tell us your tales; we’ll put the world to rights this afternoon.
Yesterday I got a letter from BT saying “your free special offer unlimited evenings calls has come to an end, as of 1st November it will be an extra £3.50 per month” so I phoned them up to say that I wanted to cancel that little extra and just have the standard line rental. It turns out that there was no way to do that without signing up for another 12 months.
They’ve stacked the whole deck in their favour. Either you pay the extra £3.50 per month, or you are locked in for another year. I feel like they’ve pulled a fast one. I’m certainly not going to make the mistake of accepting any more of their special offers. I would start looking for alternatives, but I’m not sure if switching to a non-BT service would break my current ADSL.
And now I have to choose what drink I’ll have. Something telecommunications themed, maybe? Or something foamy, because “foam” sounds a bit like “phone”. Ah fuck it, pint of beer.
Oh, you don’t want to hear my tales from this week; they’re all of the putting-the-house-on-the-market variety, hence as dull as a dull-as-ditchwater simile. However, during the course of said dullness, I did unearth a hitherto undiscovered talent as a shit-hot (*) negotiator, with a massive discount from our preferred agent to show for it. Manhattan traders would doff their caps at me, so I’ll have a Manhattan, please.
(*) Ditchwater is dull; shit is hot. Hey, I didn’t make the rules.
Until the Post Office have a) fixed Mum’s phone and b) paid her the compensation that has now been promised, I say operation #fixmumsphone remains very much on. I almost caught myself thanking the hapless drones who run the @PostOffice account yesterday, until I recalled Mum still didn’t have a phone line. I don’t recall any of my own utility based woes worth telling, which isn’t to say I don’t have any, so much as I find them all too dull or depressing to dwell upon.
Modern life is comprised a series of service providers each falling over the other to get you to sign up for one monthly payment or another. Direct Debit is the means by which we are subjugated. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Die.
Mine’s a pint. #fixmumsphone
I have no service provider travails at the moment, but I’m sure that won’t last.
I’m in the midst of my favourite annual festival, Pop Montreal and well on my way to acquiring my annual Pop Montreal cold. I’ll have a flat white with a double shot of Drambuie, thanks.
I’VE HAD NO COFFEE TODAY AND I’M NOT COPING WELL QUICK GIVE ME SOMETHING CAFFEINzzzzz.
Well, in sympathy for anyone dealing with dickbag scumsucking utility companies (putting the f at the front of utility yet again) I’ll order a bucket of Sufferin’ Bastard, please.
And for the utility companies, I’d suggest a fruity little cocktail (called a Cameron, if you care) of my own creation, involving the sludge at the bottom of a typhoid ward’s cesspit, some good lumpy month-old milk, a load of rancid festering pig shit (for extra flavour/ ripeness), and topped up with petrol for unsuppressable seepage. A couple of tankers full of that, pumped into their respective head offices. It’s the only language these curs will understand.