BT AND THE BEAST

Why is it that whenever I ring BT and am offered something "cheaper" I always suspect that it's going to end up costing me more...?

I only rang them because the letter they sent me said that I had to otherwise I'd start getting additional charges... although I did ring up intending to have a serious rant about this insistence upon "contracts" when I had absolutely no intention of moving to another company anyway.

I'm one of the "really can't be bothered with the hassle of moving such things around" brigade and have been for a very long time, so there really, really isn't any need for them to worry that I'm going to scurry off and join one of their competitors, but they do still seem to be unduly worried by this and want to be certain that they can tie me to things for whatever period of time seems necessary...

Anyway, I dialled the number and listened (with increasing irritation which eventually transformed itself into weary resignation) to the many recordings which played as I waited for my connection to Mumbai, shrill voices telling me that I didn't actually have to be on the phone to the phone company, and that I could try using their website. This was despite the fact that the letter didn't have any weblink details and actually specifically told me that I'd have to ring up in person to get this "personal offer" of this "incredible opportunity" to get exactly the same service that I was already paying over the odds for at exactly the same rate at which I already was, rather than the extra three and a half quid that they were threatening to charge.

Okay, it's not a huge amount, but it seemed stupid to be paying the extra if I really didn't have to...

Eventually a kindly sounding gentleman answered the call, telling me, in one of those "stock phrases" that they have to say, that  they were the "home of football" or some such nonsense, and I immediately decided that I really couldn't be bothered with ranting as it seldom achieves much anyway, in my experience, and it wasn't this particular person's fault that I had been put in such a mood.

In the end I just went with "terse..."

I gave one-word answers which I hoped would convey my ire to whoever it was who was eventually unfortunate enough to listen to my call which may have been recorded for training purposes, but, all-in-all, everything went through reasonably without incident...

Until THE observation was made, at any rate.

"You pay £XX for your broadband which has a monthly download limit... I can offer you unlimited broadband for about ten pounds a month less..."

So far, so good...

"But..."

Ah...

"You WILL have to also pay another £2.00 a month for the service you were actually ringing us up about to still get free evening and weekend calls with that option..."

Oh well... You win some, etc.

And, whilst I believe that I'll probably end up paying slightly less, or at least much the same as I already was, at least I've now got rid of that whole "download anxiety" thing that I was getting from watching TV on the exciting box device...

The problem is that I'm usually so very unlucky with these things that I still think that there'll be some kind of glitch and that I'll end up paying for all three somehow...

Meanwhile, I do wonder quite when BT are going to realise that I really, really don't give a stuff about their footballing television service...?

You see, all that I personally want from my telephone service is for the phone to actually work when it should, and for the internet to work when I want it to.

Everything else really doesn't matter to me.

Still, in the course of our negotiations, I did take the opportunity to mention that my home hub was very, very old (in modern day terms at least) and they actually offered to send me a new one, which was terribly nice of them...

This is why, a few days later, I found myself waiting for my brand new hub to arrive with a certain amount of trepidation given that I'd heard so many horror stories from other people who'd tried similar upgrades and found that they ended up having problems for days and even weeks afterwards.

The email I received "helpfully" told me that the delivery would be between 7am and 6pm that day, and that I shouldn't plug the shiny new hub in until I'd received an email telling me that the service had been activated... I did ponder upon how exactly I was supposed to receive such an email, given that I wouldn't actually have an internet service at that point, but I let it pass. You see, whilst I was pondering upon that particular little conundrum, I was simultaneously worrying about the many difficulties which I had had with the various devices which I have got to synchronise with the old hub across the years, and wondering quite how much "fun" my evening was going to turn out to be as I attempted to connect the latest incarnations to the new one...

I was particularly worried about my allegedly "smart" television box because that had been a major faff at the time, but I needn't have worried. There was a glitch or two along the way, and far, far too many wires had to be untangled in the vicinity of the old telephone connection box, but things generally went swimmingly which, of course, you probably knew already, given that you're able to read this nonsense today...