Prolonged Talks

“No”. It’s not a complicated word, is it? Yet as the old adage goes, some people just won’t take it for an answer.

To whit, recently I decided to join the modern world and get yer proper wireless broadband in the flat. For the past five years, I've made do with one of those dongle things you plug into your PC. In the main, it worked fine but it got to the point where it was the same cost to upgrade and besides, I wanted to get my Playstation online.

So, the nice guy from the company came round, drilled a hole in the wall, fitted a wire through and pissed about up the telegraph pole a while. Not bad for a £19 connection fee and after a couple of days, I was assured that my new super-dooper broadband was doing the job. Therefore, I could cancel the contract for my dongle (a word I find hard to type/say without resorting to a Finbarr Saunders-esque “fnarr” and saying lines like “ah, I'll just plug my dongle into the socket”).

Not a tricky job, you would think. In the ideal world, it would go thus:

Me: Hello. I would like to cancel my connection to your mobile broadband.
Phone Person: Are you sure?
Me: Yes.
PP: Alright then. (types) There you go.
Me: Thank you.

A shame, then, that we have to live in this world, where concepts such as convenience and customer service go flying out of the window in the name of chasing a few quid. Put through to some poor sod working in a call centre in (presumably) India, he seemed positively distraught that his company wouldn't be getting my £20 a month anymore, as if his boss would come round to his house personally and extort the money from his family.

As it turned out, I was a “Gold” customer and therefore applicable for some big bonuses. Strange, as this was the first I’d heard of it. I was offered an Ipad or a new laptop. This may sound tempting, but my logic chip reasoned that anything given in exchange for me signing on for another year was probably a piece of old crap.

After another ten minutes of various offers, I managed to state that I’d rather just finish it all up. Instead, I was put through to the chap’s manager. He then proceeded to repeat pretty much everything I’d already heard, asking how long I’d had my laptop (I lied and said a year, rather than the truth, which is about six years, in a vain attempt to stop him going on) and how the Ipad they were offering was part of a range “just out this week, so this is a very good deal” and so on.

I’m fully aware I’m partly to blame for ending up on the phone for the best part of 30 minutes. I could easily have just said “look, I know you have a job to do, but for fucks sake, can you just close my fucking account, as I do have some vestige of a life to be getting on with”. But my mother brought me up to be good mannered: I've also inherited this from my dad, who can often be seen frothing with rage about some company as he dials the number, only to turn into politeness personified once he talks to somebody.

Eventually, I was seeming to get my way after stating I didn't want to pass on my contract to anybody I knew, that I knew I was losing my points (whatever they were) and that I didn't want to keep my dongle (fnarr) as a backup. Me being me, of course, by the end I felt like I should apologise to the poor sod - it's not like working in some call centre all day dealing with the likes of me is easy - instead of being pissed off that an apparent simple procedure sucked half an hour of my day away. Go figure.