Well, what an exciting week it’s been. At one point on Tuesday, I even ended up swearing at the representative of the company that I won’t name - oh alright, it’s BT - who was sticking so steadfastly to the script that I simply said “Look, I couldn’t give a fuck about that…” which was followed immediately by a click of the call being terminated and a disconnected tone. Seriously though, he should have demonstrated some fucking understanding of what I was trying to tell him. The third guy I spoke to on, however, was very good. He listened to me repeat my story and then asked how I’d like it resolved. Good bloke. Didn’t really get me anywhere but good bloke nonetheless.

The backstory: in January, I got a call from BT saying “We’d like to reward you for being a loyal customer by increasing the speed of your connection, lowering your price and giving you a free BT home hub.” “What’s the catch?” I asked. “None,” he said, “it’s a loyalty thing.” “Ok, I’m game.” I said, reasoning that free stuff is always nice even though there’s never ever any such thing as a free lunch. Or loyalty rewards. It turns out that this “loyal customer reward” got me signed in to a new 12 month contract. This wasn’t actually a problem and I would probably have never found out about it if it wasn’t for the fact that I got an email last weekend telling me that I’d gone over my 8Gb download allowance. By 5Gb. And that if I did it again, I’d be charged.

My immediate thought was “what the fuck?” I mean, why would it be anything else. My second thought was “how big was the Orange Box download anyway?” - not very big, as it turns out - so my revised second thought (thought 2a) was “how much data does TeamFortress 2 exchange?” My third thought (I think very quickly - I’m still only a couple of seconds away from having comprehended the contents of the email) was “hold on! 8Gb! I should have a bigger allowance than that!” and, sure enough, I discovered that anyone who has been with BT Broadband since before October 2005 (which I have) should still have their allowance of 20Gb.

So I ring up, find out that apparently that in agreeing to my “loyalty reward” I was also signed on to a new option and my usage allowance reduced and (I subsequently discovered) an initial contract period of 12 months was put in place. Fuming, I was - bloody seething.

Anyway, Mr Helpful “I can do my job and understand the meaning of the phrase ‘customer service’” BT blokey kindly cancelled the remaining period of my contract as I felt that I had been misled by the original sales person. He also got the figures for my overall usage for the last 6 months. Turns out that I’m not a heavy user - for four months, I averaged about 4Gb/month until suddenly whoosh! it skyrockets up in August (which is odd as I wasn’t even in the house for half of August) and then again in October. I check my wireless security which, surprisingly, has reset to no security and it appears that people have been leeching my bandwidth. (I refuse to believe it’s intentionally for reasons to do with the fact that I live in the middle of nowhere). Anyway, security reinstated, bandwidth monitored, problem, hopefully, going away.

But now I’ve had a look around at other offers and, financially, there are betters available - like identical package except with unlimited download allowance, a freeview TV box thrown in and saving me the best part of £15 a month. So I call up BT again to get my MAC code (which is a way around the godawful month long wait to get Broadband re-enabled that I remember from years ago) and the very efficient sales person talks me around by offering me a (very good) new deal (on account of being an existing customer) and will throw in a BT Vision box to go with it.

Now I remember that Mike TD had, shall we say, some trouble with BT Vision and I investigate further. After much deliberation, I decide that I’ll take BT up on their new offer because I can’t lose, I can only gain. Unlike Mike, I don’t have Sky+ or anything, just the standard 5 terrestial channels. Anything will be better than nothing and if the system doesn’t work for a while, I’ll still have what I started with. Plus staying with BT means not having to change email address (because I’m the last person on earth not using a gmail address), keeping my Flickr Pro account and not having to root through the attic for my old wireless router.

You know where this is going don’t you?

I finally got through to BT about an hour ago (20:15) after not being able to all day. The bloke I spoke to wasn’t sure what I was asking for (and to be fair, I wasn’t being particularly clear about it - I couldn’t face recanting the entire saga once again). It turns out that bloke-who-made-a-very-good-offer bloke hadn’t left any notes to that effect and bloke-who-I-spoke-to-today bloke didn’t know how he got to the figure he did. Also, he couldn’t match it. The best he could do was a 12 month deal with a waived fee on once aspect of the package which would still leave me 5 quid a month worse off than if I moved provider. (After the 12 months, the full fee would kick back in, leaving me £15+ down per month.)

So what have I ultimatley ended up with after all this? A brand new, shiny and sparkling MAC code is what. And tomorrow, one of BT’s competitors will be getting a call from me asking them politely to furnish my house with unlimited broadband, free evening and weekend calls and more TV channels than I can shake a tree-shoot-that-has-been-cut-or-broken-off at.

I should add, however, that I really rate BT Broadband. It’s been reliable and stable since I first got it years and years ago. The main reason I am switching provider is pecuniary. Yes, the customer service I’ve recieved this week has been 66% crap and the rest has been pretty good but it’s not really enough of an issue to force a change. Hell, it’s the first time I’ve had to speak to them in, let’s see, 5 or 6 years? Yes, they probably misled me back in January but if it wasn’t for a security issue, I’d have lived in ignorance of that fact for a while longer. But because of that security issue, I thought I was chewing up bandwidth like nobody’s business and I ended up looking at alternative providers and realised that BT actually cost me a hell of a lot more than I could be paying.

And now, because the last thing I want to do is write any more, I’m going to go and chew up my bandwidth playing online pew-pew games with strangers.