Grappling with the many headed hydra of the telecom dragon

‘GOSH, Medders. It’s warm in here.’ ‘ That must be on account of the steam coming out of my ears, honeybun.’ Hermione shook off her coat and skipped across to where her husband sat hunched over his computer. She made a play of peering into the dark, hairy tunnels of my ears, just to check if it could possibly be true that the kitchen was being heated from that unlikely source. Her antics were almost enough to make me smile. Almost.

‘I have a sense that the day has not been going so swimmingly for you,’ she stepped back and gave me her best look of sympathetic concern. I responded with my best look of jaded irony: ‘You could say that, sweetest.’

‘I do hope you are not going to spoil my mood.’

‘If your mood is one of rumbling anger, poppet, then you and I both are in perfect sync.’ I flipped open the lap-top and pointed at the screen: ‘We really appreciate your feedback which will be used to help us continually improve our service to customers.’…

The story of how I came to waste ten hours grappling with a many headed monster like a knight on a quest in some forgotten legend goes back to last week’s phone call. The man at the other end introduced himself as Jackie and he wanted to make me an offer on behalf of a well-known tele-communications corporation.

The conversation wobbled a little when he asked me for my date of birth, as a security measure. My response was to point out that he was the one who had rung me, reasoning that I was the one who should be asking the security questions. He managed to coax an email address out of me but no further would I go, no date of birth, no mother’s maiden name, no passwords.

Nevertheless, even as he was doubtless marking my file ‘Awkward Squad’, he consented to give me details of his wonderful offer. Jackie’s company was prepared to provide Medders Manner with broadband and innumerable television channels for the merest fraction of what the other shower are charging us.

I treat all such sales pitches as though they are from that Mauritanian prince,the one who needs my bank details so that he can pay the train fare allowing him to go and collect a multi-million euro lottery win. I promised to tell my wife about the offer – anything to get him off the line.

Then, to my amazement, Hermione practically swooned when she heard the terms and castigated me roundly for my failure to sign up instantly and save ourselves hundreds. But all was not yet lost as Jackie had promised to ring back again the next day. Clearly a man of his word, he duly did so but I missed the call as I was in the supermarket and had left my phone in The Jalopy.

But Jackie left no number where he could be contacted and, though he now had my email address, I surely did not have his. I tried looking up his company’s web-site but only learned that I was due a super-duper phone up-grade which I did not need.

Fatal inspiration struck as I resolved to claim the new phone with its unrivalled memory and battery life as a gift for Hermione and also order the cut-price broadband. With Jackie still playing hard to get, I sat down at the kitchen table after breakfast armed with phone and computer nonetheless keen to hear a human voice.

The first hour was spent discovering that this was not possible. The second was spent identifying the phone best suited to Hermione’s taste and then discovering that it was not available this side of Easter 2121. The third was spent tangling with a web-page which repeatedly urged me to ‘please enter a valid mobile number or email address and try again’ without offering anywhere to type in either the number or the address.

And so it went on and on, two steps forward through the virtual labyrinth, followed by two inevitable steps back, time and time again. At one point, the company emailed me a questionnaire asking me to rate their service. My reply must have left scorch marks on the internet provider but it provoked only the following response: ‘We really appreciate your feedback which will be used to help us continually improve our service to customers.’

Sarcasm. Lowest form of wit.