Well then – after five weeks in the wilderness, I’m finally back online. I’ve got a folder-full of stuff to post, so, once I’ve waded through my email I’ll get down to it. It’s badly needed as, with very little new stuff being published, I’ve lost a few readers. It’s not near as bad as I expected, though. Anyway, it’s good to be back after weeks of boredom. If you’ve posted a comment, bear with me, I’ve only been back online a couple of hours and I’m still playing catch-up, but most have been approved, and answered where appropriate. And if you’re wondering why it’s all taken so long, it’s all down to half-wits at BT and Sky… I moved into the flat next door on May 11, as I’ve said previously, so for a couple of days I could carry on using my wi-fi Internet connection through the wall. Not for long, though, and by May 13 I was offline. There was a phone line in the new flat, with a dialling tone, so I assumed it was a working line. I phoned the BT on May 12 to get it assigned to me, but I was told that the line actually connected to a house a few streets away. So I asked how come? Don’t know, but getting a new line will cost you£122.50. (I think I’ve already written about this but I’m still offline at the time of writing, so can’t check; I’m writing a whole bunch of blog posts so I can publish them as soon as I’m connected.) Hang on, I said, maybe this is just an error at the exchange – the line obviously works from this address, because I’m talking to you on it. No it doesn’t work. Er, look, I’m using it to talk to you, so it’s working for me; can you check this out and get back to me? That will still cost £122.50. Whaaat?!!! If it turns out to be BT’s error you still expect me to pay for it? Yes. Well, good luck with that. That’s very rude… No, that’s angry and frustrated. Click! So I went online and had a scout round to see what I could find, and wound up on Sky’s website. I could get the same package I had with Tiscali – phone calls, landline rental, 8 Mb broadband and TV for very little more than Tiscali. A good deal as the new flat already had a Sky dish and the requisite wiring. As my new flat has no working phone line (apparently), I called the phone number Sky gave for such an eventuality (on the phone line that didn’t work!). I discussed what I wanted, pointing out that I quite definitely had no phone line and specifically asked them to confirm that this wouldn’t be a problem. No, I was told, everything will be fine. They transferred me to their local installer, who also said it would be fine – trouble is, it was all bullshit. Anyway, on the 16 th my Sky dish was installed and, because I had no phone line, over which the dish would normally be configured (I think), I had to pay £40 instead of the normal £15 for installation. The engineer spent a total of 15 minutes – he connected the Sky box, for which I had to provide a SCART extension as the poxy SCART lead was too short (pure luck I had one, I’d bought it for something else entirely, and I’ve no idea what would have happened if I hadn’t) – and then he buggered off. I am currently waiting for Sky to tell me how the hell this represents £40 worth of engineer service! I asked the guy – delaying his dash for the door – when I could expect my broadband and phone services. In about 5 days, he said – and was gone. In 5 days what I actually got was a letter from Sky confirming my order – just the basic TV service, no mention of anything else. So I phoned Sky customer services. Have you ever done that? If not, my advice is don’t. I spent over 5 minutes wandering through menu-land before getting an incomprehensible Scotsman on the line (Sky are based in West Lothian). Now this always pisses me off – UK customer service staff should speak minimally-accented standard English, no matter what their nationality – if they can’t be understood, especially with the bleed-through noise from their colleagues in adjacent cubicles, what the hell is the point? And even Scots can find each other unintelligible, so how they expect the rest of us to cope is beyond me. This guy was a close relative of Rab C Nesbitt, it seemed, and I got no more than one word in 3 or 4 (and that’s being generous), but the gist was that I can’t have broadband or phone without a phone line. I’d rather naively supposed that their entire network was run through their satellites – well, how the hell was I to know? They certainly don’t tell you. So then I thought I’d borrow a friend’s PC and check out their website, as I was offline by now. Before I could do that I had to log in – their half-assed system had me typing in Captchas for almost 10 minutes (yes, they were accurately typed!), before one was accepted, at which point I just couldn’t be bothered going any further. I tend to judge organisations by their websites, and Sky failed, miserably, to impress, or even encourage, me. So, god help me, I called Sky again, on my mobe (the mysterious BT line tended to cut me off after about 10 minutes), and this timed was plunged even deeper into the horrors of Sky’s menus – not just one menu, but five or six of the buggers. Eventually I heard one item that seemed close to what I wanted (nothing I was offered matched what I really wanted), so I hit that button. “Please key in your phone number,” said a recorded voice (difficult one, that, not having one), so I waited, assuming that if I did nothing the system would default to putting me through to a real live human (who, hopefully, I could understand!). Nope, it just kept on repeating itself and seemed set to go on doing so indefinitely, so I hung up. So I phoned BT again and, this time, I got a very nice lady with the sort of voice it would be a pleasure to wake up next to. She checked the line, saying there was no problem, and no mystery – the line had been unused for so long – 8 months – that the number had been re-allocated. Now why couldn’t the first bimbo tell me that? So I ordered a phone line, to which I later added BT Privacy, a free caller ID service – yes, I know! – something free from BT! That’s because no sooner was a number allocated to my line than I started getting nuisance calls from telemarketing asswipes. Not even real people, but sodding recordings – half a dozen in one day. So I activated the answering machine on my cordless phone, and promptly discovered that the beep actually turns off the recording that’s harassing me. Shame I can’t find a way to make it beep right at the start of the OGM, instead of the end. Did I want broadband, I was asked, finally? Nope, not after my previous experience, thanks, and on that note we parted. Back to my friend’s computer, to check out what Tiscali want for their basic 8Mb broadband, with no extras. It was £8-odd. It’s now £14.99 since the take-over by TalkTalk. Back home, I dug out the printed copy I’d made of my Sky order, and as I thought, 8Mb broadband – now I have a phone line – will cost me a fiver. Too good a deal to pass up, so yesterday (June 11, the day after my phone line was connected), I went online to check sign up (Sky also offer a 16Mb service for silly money, but that’s not available here). I should be connected on June 19 and, if that happens, that’s when I’ll publish this. Once my 12-month contract with BT has expired I’ll switch my phone package to Sky, too, and once more be out of the baleful clutches of BT. For now, though, I’m back in the clutches of BT, locked into a 12-month contract, which is somewhere I really didn’t want to be, and having to pay £122.50 to have the dead line reconnected. That’s a bigger rip-off than the Sky engineer, especially since I got a text from BT to tell me an engineer wouldn’t be required after all, but beggars can’t be choosers, sadly. But £122.50 for some bugger throwing a switch at the exchange, or simply using a computer to assign the new number to the already-operational line, is a bloody good scam by any measure. One final comment. Sky’s accounting appears to be quite creative. My monthly payment is £16.50 but, 3 weeks into the first month, I added two more packages at £1 a month each, taking it to £18.50 a month. I got a letter from Sky saying that, as a result, the first month’s payment would be £20.95, because each rate is calculated pro-rata. Fair enough, but part of the month (3 weeks), at £16.50, and the rest at (1 week), £18.50 cannot possibly exceed the higher rate, and should be lower, around £17.20. So I’ll have to write to them, again, to challenge this – no point in phoning if I can’t understand whoever’s on the other end. God, it’s getting tiresome. Sky seem, too, to be trying to foist upon me a phone service I didn’t order – more about which later. Well then – after five weeks in the wilderness, I’m finally back online. I’ve got a folder-full of stuff to post, so, once I’ve waded through my email I’ll get down to it. It’s badly needed as, with very little new stuff being published, I’ve lost a few readers. It’s not near as bad as I expected, though. Anyway, it’s good to be back after weeks of boredom. If you’ve posted a comment, bear with me, I’ve only been back online a couple of hours and I’m still playing catch-up, but most have been approved, and answered where appropriate. And if you’re wondering why it’s all taken so long, it’s all down to half-wits at BT and Sky… I moved into the flat next door on May 11, as I’ve said previously, so for a couple of days I could carry on using my wi-fi Internet connection through the wall. Not for long, though, and by May 13 I was offline. There was a phone line in the new flat, with a dialling tone, so I assumed it was a working line. I phoned the BT on May 12 to get it assigned to me, but I was told that the line actually connected to a house a few streets away. So I asked how come? Don’t know, but getting a new line will cost you£122.50. (I think I’ve already written about this but I’m still offline at the time of writing, so can’t check; I’m writing a whole bunch of blog posts so I can publish them as soon as I’m connected.) Hang on, I said, maybe this is just an error at the exchange – the line obviously works from this address, because I’m talking to you on it. No it doesn’t work. Er, look, I’m using it to talk to you, so it’s working for me; can you check this out and get back to me? That will still cost £122.50. Whaaat?!!! If it turns out to be BT’s error you still expect me to pay for it? Yes. Well, good luck with that. That’s very rude… No, that’s angry and frustrated. Click! So I went online and had a scout round to see what I could find, and wound up on Sky’s website. I could get the same package I had with Tiscali – phone calls, landline rental, 8 Mb broadband and TV for very little more than Tiscali. A good deal as the new flat already had a Sky dish and the requisite wiring. As my new flat has no working phone line (apparently), I called the phone number Sky gave for such an eventuality (on the phone line that didn’t work!). I discussed what I wanted, pointing out that I quite definitely had no phone line and specifically asked them to confirm that this wouldn’t be a problem. No, I was told, everything will be fine. They transferred me to their local installer, who also said it would be fine – trouble is, it was all bullshit. Anyway, on the 16 th my Sky dish was installed and, because I had no phone line, over which the dish would normally be configured (I think), I had to pay £40 instead of the normal £15 for installation. The engineer spent a total of 15 minutes – he connected the Sky box, for which I had to provide a SCART extension as the poxy SCART lead was too short (pure luck I had one, I’d bought it for something else entirely, and I’ve no idea what would have happened if I hadn’t) – and then he buggered off. I am currently waiting for Sky to tell me how the hell this represents £40 worth of engineer service! I asked the guy – delaying his dash for the door – when I could expect my broadband and phone services. In about 5 days, he said – and was gone. In 5 days what I actually got was a letter from Sky confirming my order – just the basic TV service, no mention of anything else. So I phoned Sky customer services. Have you ever done that? If not, my advice is don’t. I spent over 5 minutes wandering through menu-land before getting an incomprehensible Scotsman on the line (Sky are based in West Lothian). Now this always pisses me off – UK customer service staff should speak minimally-accented standard English, no matter what their nationality – if they can’t be understood, especially with the bleed-through noise from their colleagues in adjacent cubicles, what the hell is the point? And even Scots can find each other unintelligible, so how they expect the rest of us to cope is beyond me. This guy was a close relative of Rab C Nesbitt, it seemed, and I got no more than one word in 3 or 4 (and that’s being generous), but the gist was that I can’t have broadband or phone without a phone line. I’d rather naively supposed that their entire network was run through their satellites – well, how the hell was I to know? They certainly don’t tell you. So then I thought I’d borrow a friend’s PC and check out their website, as I was offline by now. Before I could do that I had to log in – their half-assed system had me typing in Captchas for almost 10 minutes (yes, they were accurately typed!), before one was accepted, at which point I just couldn’t be bothered going any further. I tend to judge organisations by their websites, and Sky failed, miserably, to impress, or even encourage, me. So, god help me, I called Sky again, on my mobe (the mysterious BT line tended to cut me off after about 10 minutes), and this timed was plunged even deeper into the horrors of Sky’s menus – not just one menu, but five or six of the buggers. Eventually I heard one item that seemed close to what I wanted (nothing I was offered matched what I really wanted), so I hit that button. “Please key in your phone number,” said a recorded voice (difficult one, that, not having one), so I waited, assuming that if I did nothing the system would default to putting me through to a real live human (who, hopefully, I could understand!). Nope, it just kept on repeating itself and seemed set to go on doing so indefinitely, so I hung up. So I phoned BT again and, this time, I got a very nice lady with the sort of voice it would be a pleasure to wake up next to. She checked the line, saying there was no problem, and no mystery – the line had been unused for so long – 8 months – that the number had been re-allocated. Now why couldn’t the first bimbo tell me that? So I ordered a phone line, to which I later added BT Privacy, a free caller ID service – yes, I know! – something free from BT! That’s because no sooner was a number allocated to my line than I started getting nuisance calls from telemarketing asswipes. Not even real people, but sodding recordings – half a dozen in one day. So I activated the answering machine on my cordless phone, and promptly discovered that the beep actually turns off the recording that’s harassing me. Shame I can’t find a way to make it beep right at the start of the OGM, instead of the end. Did I want broadband, I was asked, finally? Nope, not after my previous experience, thanks, and on that note we parted. Back to my friend’s computer, to check out what Tiscali want for their basic 8Mb broadband, with no extras. It was £8-odd. It’s now £14.99 since the take-over by TalkTalk. Back home, I dug out the printed copy I’d made of my Sky order, and as I thought, 8Mb broadband – now I have a phone line – will cost me a fiver. Too good a deal to pass up, so yesterday (June 11, the day after my phone line was connected), I went online to check sign up (Sky also offer a 16Mb service for silly money, but that’s not available here). I should be connected on June 19 and, if that happens, that’s when I’ll publish this. Once my 12-month contract with BT has expired I’ll switch my phone package to Sky, too, and once more be out of the baleful clutches of BT. For now, though, I’m back in the clutches of BT, locked into a 12-month contract, which is somewhere I really didn’t want to be, and having to pay £122.50 to have the dead line reconnected. That’s a bigger rip-off than the Sky engineer, especially since I got a text from BT to tell me an engineer wouldn’t be required after all, but beggars can’t be choosers, sadly. But £122.50 for some bugger throwing a switch at the exchange, or simply using a computer to assign the new number to the already-operational line, is a bloody good scam by any measure. One final comment. Sky’s accounting appears to be quite creative. My monthly payment is £16.50 but, 3 weeks into the first month, I added two more packages at £1 a month each, taking it to £18.50 a month. I got a letter from Sky saying that, as a result, the first month’s payment would be £20.95, because each rate is calculated pro-rata. Fair enough, but part of the month (3 weeks), at £16.50, and the rest at (1 week), £18.50 cannot possibly exceed the higher rate, and should be lower, around £17.20. So I’ll have to write to them, again, to challenge this – no point in phoning if I can’t understand whoever’s on the other end. God, it’s getting tiresome. Sky seem, too, to be trying to foist upon me a phone service I didn’t order – more about which later.
|
Well then – after five weeks in the wilderness, I’m finally back online.
I’ve got a folder-full of stuff to post, so, once I’ve waded through my email I’ll get down to it. It’s badly needed as, with very little new stuff being published, I’ve lost a few readers. It’s not near as bad as I expected, though. Anyway, it’s good to be back after weeks of boredom.
If you’ve posted a comment, bear with me, I’ve only been back online a couple of hours and I’m still playing catch-up, but most have been approved, and answered where appropriate.
And if you’re wondering why it’s all taken so long, it’s all down to half-wits at BT and Sky…
I moved into the flat next door on May 11, as I’ve said previously, so for a couple of days I could carry on using my wi-fi Internet connection through the wall. Not for long, though, and by May 13 I was offline.
There was a phone line in the new flat, with a dialling tone, so I assumed it was a working line. I phoned the BT on May 12 to get it assigned to me, but I was told that the line actually connected to a house a few streets away. So I asked how come?
Don’t know, but getting a new line will cost you£122.50. (I think I’ve already written about this but I’m still offline at the time of writing, so can’t check; I’m writing a whole bunch of blog posts so I can publish them as soon as I’m connected.)
Hang on, I said, maybe this is just an error at the exchange – the line obviously works from this address, because I’m talking to you on it.
No it doesn’t work.
Er, look, I’m using it to talk to you, so it’s working for me; can you check this out and get back to me?
That will still cost £122.50.
Whaaat?!!! If it turns out to be BT’s error you still expect me to pay for it?
Yes.
Well, good luck with that.
That’s very rude…
No, that’s angry and frustrated. Click!
So I went online and had a scout round to see what I could find, and wound up on Sky’s website. I could get the same package I had with Tiscali – phone calls, landline rental, 8 Mb broadband and TV for very little more than Tiscali. A good deal as the new flat already had a Sky dish and the requisite wiring.
As my new flat has no working phone line (apparently), I called the phone number Sky gave for such an eventuality (on the phone line that didn’t work!). I discussed what I wanted, pointing out that I quite definitely had no phone line and specifically asked them to confirm that this wouldn’t be a problem. No, I was told, everything will be fine. They transferred me to their local installer, who also said it would be fine – trouble is, it was all bullshit.
Anyway, on the 16 th my Sky dish was installed and, because I had no phone line, over which the dish would normally be configured (I think), I had to pay £40 instead of the normal £15 for installation. The engineer spent a total of 15 minutes – he connected the Sky box, for which I had to provide a SCART extension as the poxy SCART lead was too short (pure luck I had one, I’d bought it for something else entirely, and I’ve no idea what would have happened if I hadn’t) – and then he buggered off. I am currently waiting for Sky to tell me how the hell this represents £40 worth of engineer service!
I asked the guy – delaying his dash for the door – when I could expect my broadband and phone services. In about 5 days, he said – and was gone.
In 5 days what I actually got was a letter from Sky confirming my order – just the basic TV service, no mention of anything else. So I phoned Sky customer services.
Have you ever done that? If not, my advice is don’t. I spent over 5 minutes wandering through menu-land before getting an incomprehensible Scotsman on the line (Sky are based in West Lothian). Now this always pisses me off – UK customer service staff should speak minimally-accented standard English, no matter what their nationality – if they can’t be understood, especially with the bleed-through noise from their colleagues in adjacent cubicles, what the hell is the point? And even Scots can find each other unintelligible, so how they expect the rest of us to cope is beyond me.
This guy was a close relative of Rab C Nesbitt, it seemed, and I got no more than one word in 3 or 4 (and that’s being generous), but the gist was that I can’t have broadband or phone without a phone line. I’d rather naively supposed that their entire network was run through their satellites – well, how the hell was I to know? They certainly don’t tell you.
So then I thought I’d borrow a friend’s PC and check out their website, as I was offline by now. Before I could do that I had to log in – their half-assed system had me typing in Captchas for almost 10 minutes (yes, they were accurately typed!), before one was accepted, at which point I just couldn’t be bothered going any further. I tend to judge organisations by their websites, and Sky failed, miserably, to impress, or even encourage, me.
So, god help me, I called Sky again, on my mobe (the mysterious BT line tended to cut me off after about 10 minutes), and this timed was plunged even deeper into the horrors of Sky’s menus – not just one menu, but five or six of the buggers. Eventually I heard one item that seemed close to what I wanted (nothing I was offered matched what I really wanted), so I hit that button. “Please key in your phone number,” said a recorded voice (difficult one, that, not having one), so I waited, assuming that if I did nothing the system would default to putting me through to a real live human (who, hopefully, I could understand!). Nope, it just kept on repeating itself and seemed set to go on doing so indefinitely, so I hung up.
So I phoned BT again and, this time, I got a very nice lady with the sort of voice it would be a pleasure to wake up next to. She checked the line, saying there was no problem, and no mystery – the line had been unused for so long – 8 months – that the number had been re-allocated. Now why couldn’t the first bimbo tell me that? So I ordered a phone line, to which I later added BT Privacy, a free caller ID service – yes, I know! – something free from BT! That’s because no sooner was a number allocated to my line than I started getting nuisance calls from telemarketing asswipes. Not even real people, but sodding recordings – half a dozen in one day. So I activated the answering machine on my cordless phone, and promptly discovered that the beep actually turns off the recording that’s harassing me. Shame I can’t find a way to make it beep right at the start of the OGM, instead of the end.
Did I want broadband, I was asked, finally? Nope, not after my previous experience, thanks, and on that note we parted.
Back to my friend’s computer, to check out what Tiscali want for their basic 8Mb broadband, with no extras. It was £8-odd. It’s now £14.99 since the take-over by TalkTalk.
Back home, I dug out the printed copy I’d made of my Sky order, and as I thought, 8Mb broadband – now I have a phone line – will cost me a fiver. Too good a deal to pass up, so yesterday (June 11, the day after my phone line was connected), I went online to check sign up (Sky also offer a 16Mb service for silly money, but that’s not available here). I should be connected on June 19 and, if that happens, that’s when I’ll publish this. Once my 12-month contract with BT has expired I’ll switch my phone package to Sky, too, and once more be out of the baleful clutches of BT.
For now, though, I’m back in the clutches of BT, locked into a 12-month contract, which is somewhere I really didn’t want to be, and having to pay £122.50 to have the dead line reconnected. That’s a bigger rip-off than the Sky engineer, especially since I got a text from BT to tell me an engineer wouldn’t be required after all, but beggars can’t be choosers, sadly. But £122.50 for some bugger throwing a switch at the exchange, or simply using a computer to assign the new number to the already-operational line, is a bloody good scam by any measure.
One final comment. Sky’s accounting appears to be quite creative. My monthly payment is £16.50 but, 3 weeks into the first month, I added two more packages at £1 a month each, taking it to £18.50 a month. I got a letter from Sky saying that, as a result, the first month’s payment would be £20.95, because each rate is calculated pro-rata. Fair enough, but part of the month (3 weeks), at £16.50, and the rest at (1 week), £18.50 cannot possibly exceed the higher rate, and should be lower, around £17.20. So I’ll have to write to them, again, to challenge this – no point in phoning if I can’t understand whoever’s on the other end. God, it’s getting tiresome.
Sky seem, too, to be trying to foist upon me a phone service I didn’t order – more about which later.
Well then – after five weeks in the wilderness, I’m finally back online.
I’ve got a folder-full of stuff to post, so, once I’ve waded through my email I’ll get down to it. It’s badly needed as, with very little new stuff being published, I’ve lost a few readers. It’s not near as bad as I expected, though. Anyway, it’s good to be back after weeks of boredom.
If you’ve posted a comment, bear with me, I’ve only been back online a couple of hours and I’m still playing catch-up, but most have been approved, and answered where appropriate.
And if you’re wondering why it’s all taken so long, it’s all down to half-wits at BT and Sky…
I moved into the flat next door on May 11, as I’ve said previously, so for a couple of days I could carry on using my wi-fi Internet connection through the wall. Not for long, though, and by May 13 I was offline.
There was a phone line in the new flat, with a dialling tone, so I assumed it was a working line. I phoned the BT on May 12 to get it assigned to me, but I was told that the line actually connected to a house a few streets away. So I asked how come?
Don’t know, but getting a new line will cost you£122.50. (I think I’ve already written about this but I’m still offline at the time of writing, so can’t check; I’m writing a whole bunch of blog posts so I can publish them as soon as I’m connected.)
Hang on, I said, maybe this is just an error at the exchange – the line obviously works from this address, because I’m talking to you on it.
No it doesn’t work.
Er, look, I’m using it to talk to you, so it’s working for me; can you check this out and get back to me?
That will still cost £122.50.
Whaaat?!!! If it turns out to be BT’s error you still expect me to pay for it?
Yes.
Well, good luck with that.
That’s very rude…
No, that’s angry and frustrated. Click!
So I went online and had a scout round to see what I could find, and wound up on Sky’s website. I could get the same package I had with Tiscali – phone calls, landline rental, 8 Mb broadband and TV for very little more than Tiscali. A good deal as the new flat already had a Sky dish and the requisite wiring.
As my new flat has no working phone line (apparently), I called the phone number Sky gave for such an eventuality (on the phone line that didn’t work!). I discussed what I wanted, pointing out that I quite definitely had no phone line and specifically asked them to confirm that this wouldn’t be a problem. No, I was told, everything will be fine. They transferred me to their local installer, who also said it would be fine – trouble is, it was all bullshit.
Anyway, on the 16 th my Sky dish was installed and, because I had no phone line, over which the dish would normally be configured (I think), I had to pay £40 instead of the normal £15 for installation. The engineer spent a total of 15 minutes – he connected the Sky box, for which I had to provide a SCART extension as the poxy SCART lead was too short (pure luck I had one, I’d bought it for something else entirely, and I’ve no idea what would have happened if I hadn’t) – and then he buggered off. I am currently waiting for Sky to tell me how the hell this represents £40 worth of engineer service!
I asked the guy – delaying his dash for the door – when I could expect my broadband and phone services. In about 5 days, he said – and was gone.
In 5 days what I actually got was a letter from Sky confirming my order – just the basic TV service, no mention of anything else. So I phoned Sky customer services.
Have you ever done that? If not, my advice is don’t. I spent over 5 minutes wandering through menu-land before getting an incomprehensible Scotsman on the line (Sky are based in West Lothian). Now this always pisses me off – UK customer service staff should speak minimally-accented standard English, no matter what their nationality – if they can’t be understood, especially with the bleed-through noise from their colleagues in adjacent cubicles, what the hell is the point? And even Scots can find each other unintelligible, so how they expect the rest of us to cope is beyond me.
This guy was a close relative of Rab C Nesbitt, it seemed, and I got no more than one word in 3 or 4 (and that’s being generous), but the gist was that I can’t have broadband or phone without a phone line. I’d rather naively supposed that their entire network was run through their satellites – well, how the hell was I to know? They certainly don’t tell you.
So then I thought I’d borrow a friend’s PC and check out their website, as I was offline by now. Before I could do that I had to log in – their half-assed system had me typing in Captchas for almost 10 minutes (yes, they were accurately typed!), before one was accepted, at which point I just couldn’t be bothered going any further. I tend to judge organisations by their websites, and Sky failed, miserably, to impress, or even encourage, me.
So, god help me, I called Sky again, on my mobe (the mysterious BT line tended to cut me off after about 10 minutes), and this timed was plunged even deeper into the horrors of Sky’s menus – not just one menu, but five or six of the buggers. Eventually I heard one item that seemed close to what I wanted (nothing I was offered matched what I really wanted), so I hit that button. “Please key in your phone number,” said a recorded voice (difficult one, that, not having one), so I waited, assuming that if I did nothing the system would default to putting me through to a real live human (who, hopefully, I could understand!). Nope, it just kept on repeating itself and seemed set to go on doing so indefinitely, so I hung up.
So I phoned BT again and, this time, I got a very nice lady with the sort of voice it would be a pleasure to wake up next to. She checked the line, saying there was no problem, and no mystery – the line had been unused for so long – 8 months – that the number had been re-allocated. Now why couldn’t the first bimbo tell me that? So I ordered a phone line, to which I later added BT Privacy, a free caller ID service – yes, I know! – something free from BT! That’s because no sooner was a number allocated to my line than I started getting nuisance calls from telemarketing asswipes. Not even real people, but sodding recordings – half a dozen in one day. So I activated the answering machine on my cordless phone, and promptly discovered that the beep actually turns off the recording that’s harassing me. Shame I can’t find a way to make it beep right at the start of the OGM, instead of the end.
Did I want broadband, I was asked, finally? Nope, not after my previous experience, thanks, and on that note we parted.
Back to my friend’s computer, to check out what Tiscali want for their basic 8Mb broadband, with no extras. It was £8-odd. It’s now £14.99 since the take-over by TalkTalk.
Back home, I dug out the printed copy I’d made of my Sky order, and as I thought, 8Mb broadband – now I have a phone line – will cost me a fiver. Too good a deal to pass up, so yesterday (June 11, the day after my phone line was connected), I went online to check sign up (Sky also offer a 16Mb service for silly money, but that’s not available here). I should be connected on June 19 and, if that happens, that’s when I’ll publish this. Once my 12-month contract with BT has expired I’ll switch my phone package to Sky, too, and once more be out of the baleful clutches of BT.
For now, though, I’m back in the clutches of BT, locked into a 12-month contract, which is somewhere I really didn’t want to be, and having to pay £122.50 to have the dead line reconnected. That’s a bigger rip-off than the Sky engineer, especially since I got a text from BT to tell me an engineer wouldn’t be required after all, but beggars can’t be choosers, sadly. But £122.50 for some bugger throwing a switch at the exchange, or simply using a computer to assign the new number to the already-operational line, is a bloody good scam by any measure.
One final comment. Sky’s accounting appears to be quite creative. My monthly payment is £16.50 but, 3 weeks into the first month, I added two more packages at £1 a month each, taking it to £18.50 a month. I got a letter from Sky saying that, as a result, the first month’s payment would be £20.95, because each rate is calculated pro-rata. Fair enough, but part of the month (3 weeks), at £16.50, and the rest at (1 week), £18.50 cannot possibly exceed the higher rate, and should be lower, around £17.20. So I’ll have to write to them, again, to challenge this – no point in phoning if I can’t understand whoever’s on the other end. God, it’s getting tiresome.
Sky seem, too, to be trying to foist upon me a phone service I didn’t order – more about which later.
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