I am so tired. Today I went in to work early, worked through lunch (which mostly consisted of running macros in excel while I was on the phone to BT) and then left late. Everyone in my office is stressed, which doesn't improve the atmosphere in there either.

Time spent on the phone to BT today: 52 minutes (the work phones show the time of your calls on the display)
Progress made: Back to where I was Monday lunchtime
Total number of people spoke to at BT: 7
Number of different pieces of hold music heard: 1, more than once through too

And this is going to be long...

The estate agent either can't or won't help me with the phone number at the new flat, except to tell me it was Virgin Media there (which I'd guessed) and I could go with them if I wanted to. But since they're worse than not having a phone line at all, I'm not going to be doing that.

So I rang BT and spoke to a person to tell them I needed a line putting in at the £30 rate. They put me through to someone else. I told them I needed a line putting in at the £30 rate. They put me through to Customer Options, who are the only people who had heard of the £30 rate. I told them I needed a line putting in at the £30 rate, so they put me through to Broadband Home Movers. Since I don't have broadband with BT and don't want broadband with BT they couldn't help me and put me back through to Customer Options.

I told them I needed a line putting in at the £30 rate. She could do that, but didn't know what to do about the sim code to give to Zen. So she found out that it was the same as the order number (that's what BT told me last time and they were wrong). But she couldn't do that part of it so she promised me Home Movers did know all about the £30 rate and put me through to them.

I told them I needed a line putting in at the £30 rate with a sim code. They swore blind there was no such thing as the £30 rate and put me back to Customer Options. I told them I needed a line putting in at the £30 rate and didn't want to be transferred any more. So he did it.

However, it turns out that one of the conditions of the £30 rate is you have to make at least 10 calls a month, which I don't think I do at the moment. So I need to do that, but since I automatically have free weekend calls if I call the speaking clock ten times on the first weekend of the month that'll sort it out.

So then he told me he needed details so I could pay by direct debit. I told him I didn't want to pay my direct debit. He told me there was no other way to pay your phone bills. I told him there was and I paid on the BT website. He told me that wasn't possible. I told him it was and I didn't want to pay by direct debit. He put me on hold and discovered someone in his office pays on the BT website. So he believed me and told me it would cost me £1.50 a month to pay that way, which I already know. Then he said that was £4.50 a quarter. I told him I wanted to carry on paying monthly. He gave in and believed me on that one.

Also, it turns out that I'd forgotten that in August BT rang me up and persuaded me to have the free weekend and evening calls option added to my account for free. As long as I didn't cancel my account in the next year. I can't believe moving counts as cancelling, although I didn't think of that at the time. I'll have to call them again, but it can wait till the weekend now.

So then I thought I'd ring Zen. Turns out the order number isn't the sim code. It doesn't have the right number of characters and doesn't have any letters for a start. The bloke I talked to basically said the same as the last person I spoke to at Zen. Out of fifteen people he'd dealt with this month with sim codes from BT, only one worked. Even someone who worked at Zen couldn't get the right sim code from them.

At which point I admitted defeat because I just can't take the stress any more on top of the work stress. Spooks on Monday night actually calmed me down, which is a new thing. Although I did watch it while cuddling a bunny, so that probably had something to do with it. But several times during my phone conversations today I just wanted to bang my head against the desk - it would have done just as much good.

Now my new phone line gets installed (ie they flick a switch) on 12th December. At which point I can ring Zen and it'll take six working days to get broadband working I move in on 13th December. My phone line gets taken away on 15th December, so I'll tell Pipex to stop then too. On 16th December I go back to work. So I will have some broadband access every day at least. And I should have it before Christmas, which will be an improvement on two years ago.

Comments are closed.