It was the Christmas present from Hell. A Double Whammy,
right in the solar plexus. My telephone line dead as a hairbrush and the
discovery that the telephone company had been taking two sums of money from my direct
debit account instead of one for the last eight months. The telephone company in question? The dreaded Talk Talk. I braced myself and tapped the number into my
mobile telephone. The usual disembodied voice giving you a choice of numbers,
dependent upon the service required, and then asking you to tap your number in,
followed by the hash key. Then a long
wait whilst they connect you, during which time you listen once again to the
Box Tops singing ‘Neon Rainbow,’ a song I used to like, but now loathe with a
passion, especially as it sounds like the Box Tops are singing from the bottom
of a sewer. Then, at last, someone picks
up the telephone.
I’m through to Mumbai
again and my heart sinks. I say my name, and then am asked to spell it. I am asked for my password. “What password?”,
I reply, the faint glimmerings of anger and frustration already showing. Instead
of a password, I have to give them my full postal address. They ask me to spell it. I have to give my date of birth. I explain that my line has been dead since
yesterday. “That’s another department,
Mr Hardwick, please wait while I put you through.” Another five minutes
elapses, during which time I am treated not only to ‘Neon Rainbow’ from the
sewer but also ‘Down Under’ by Men At Work, from the bypass tunnel of the Eurostar. Another Indian lady picks up the phone, only this one has a deeper and harsher voice, like Arthur Mullard auditioning for Peter Sellers' Indian Doctor part in 'The Millionairess.'
The first lady hasn’t briefed the second, so I go through the rigmarole
with my password, name and address. She
asks me to spell the latter two. I then
launch into my spiel about the dead line.
She says she’ll register the fault, but if it’s inside my junction box
then that’s my responsibility and there’s a fixed charge of £130. I'm not about to argue about the unjustness of this, for fear that my phone battery will give out. I ring off, as I daren’t trust them to handle
more than one problem at a time.
Thirty-seven minutes have elapsed since I first tapped in the number.
I now have the much more difficult task of
explaining the two direct debits. I ring
again, and go through the same farrago with the disembodied voice, the
telephone number, the hash key, the musical interlude, this time including some
unspeakable Madonna number from the bottom of an oil-well. I’m through to Mumbai again. It’s a lady, only this time with a high,
piping, lilting voice. I go through the
name and address bit and she asks me to spell both. I attempt to explain my dilemma. I lapse almost into pidgin English, but she
hasn’t grasped it. Eventually, she says
“I’ll put you through to customer relations”. “Aren’t you customer
relations?” I wail - “No, we’re customer
services.”
I wait for another ten minutes – ‘Neon Rainbow’, ‘Down Under’,
unspeakable Madonna and, in addition, ‘Lost In France’ by Bonnie Tyler from an
aircraft hangar in Lowestoft. I wish I
was lost in France
“Ah’ll tell thee what ah’ll do. Ah’ll put thee through t’ ‘Cancellations’ –
they’ll sort it – Ah’ll brief them first.”
He was as good as his word. Within five minutes a female, perhaps a
native of Letchworth or Biggleswade, said that she had cancelled the number I
never had in the first place and I would be reimbursed with £236 of wrongful
direct debit payments within a fortnight.
I hung up the phone, 57 minutes after I had first rung in the number.
I thought this was a distinct improvement on
the last time, when I spent three hours on a tour of India, South Africa,
Australia, finally ending up in Oldham, with a query on a previous bill as to how it was possible
to speak to someone non-stop for four hours and forty-seven minutes without duplication, repetition or hesitation, and rack up a
charge of £10.90.
Unless it was speaking to Talk Talk, of course.
