I have finally managed to persuade BT to send an engineer to my local exchange to try and fix the problems with my broadband connection – this after a lot of long and stressful conversations on the phone to a call centre somewhere in India.

Apparently there was disturbance on my telephone line. The bloke on the phone claimed to have removed this disturbance. Despite my telephone now apparently “undisturbed”, the download speed cannot go above 1mbps. Which is shit.

This all after waiting by my phone for a call back from BT. A call back which never materialised. Apparently when they agreed to call me at 8pm the night before, for some reason they decided to call at 12.14pm. How the hell that works, I don’t know.

Cue another telephone call to BT and yet another excuse. This one being a “tag” on my line. To me, “a tag on the line” means my telephone either has an Asbo and as a result has to wear a bracelet on its ankle, or I am unable to change broadband providers – neither issue would result in a rubbish connection.

When I asked the lady on the phone for a further explanation, I was more than a little shocked by her response. I quote, with no word of a lie, “It is difficult… I do not know how to explain in English”

Luckily, they have promised an engineer will come and fix the problem within the next 48 hours. As this is a start of a Bank Holiday weekend, I will be surprised if the problem is resolved by Tuesday. I think a complaint is in order. If nothing else, I should be able to get some money off my next bill in a form of compensation for emotional distress… and for being bullshitted to.

Disturbance on the line, my arse…

Most of my evening has been spent on the phone to customer service help lines. I say most of my evening, that’s a slight exaggeration. It was more like 15 minutes (at most).

I had my “big shop” delivered by Tesco this week. Being a male, living alone, my shopping orders are somewhat predictable – primarily consisting of pizza, cider and curry. Although this time there was no curry! I ordered curry. I was charged for curry. Was curry delivered? Nope. There was no curry!

A quick call to Tesco HQ was soon made. Judging by the accent of the bloke on the phone, Tesco Customer Services have moved to Swansea. Still, the nice man offered to refund my Tikka Masala, but only after asking what brand of curry it was – “Tesco or Virgin”. If Richard Branson has moved into the Indian food business, it’s news to me. As well as a refund on my curry, I also managed to blag money back on all delivery charges. Not a bad day’s work. The money saved on delivery will pay for a takeaway curry.

As well as grocery problems, I’ve also had issues with my internet connection. While trying to watch the Manchester United/Spurs game online, the net decided to die again. While trying to fix it and swearing at the same time, I was interrupted mid-rant by a telephone call. On the end of the phone was BT. Anyone who has seen the classic sitcom Bottom will remember when the guys broke into Mr. Rottweiler’s house to remove the illegal gas supply. When it all goes wrong and a fire starts, Mr. Rottweiler shouts for help from the gas man, only to conveniently find one standing on his door step. My cry for help from BT, immediately being followed by them calling my landline, was very similar to that classic Bottom scene.

BT were about as helpful as… well… errr… it’s too late to think of a good analogy, but put it this way – they were rubbish. All they wanted to do was sell me BT Infinity and not fix my existing problem. I must admit, the offer of fibre optic broadband was tempting, but the fact their package offers a pitiful 40gig of bandwidth a month means it’ll be a no go for me.