My phone isn’t broken, but I almost am

HERE, my dears, is a story about a very silly lady (me) who wanted to upgrade her phone but got an aneurysm instead. Our tale begins online, because I have an entirely logical and totally justified hatred of talking to anyone in mobile phone company call centres as they are all expertly trained not to answer your questions. I pick a phone and sign up to a 24 month plan (flexible!) but when the phone is delivered it is the wrong one. From this moment on, I am doomed. After returning the wrong phone to the warehouse I get a text telling me it has been received so I’m back to square one, except now I’m told I won’t be eligible to upgrade until the year 2019. After pleading with someone on the phone, I get put through to the upgrade centre where I am talked into a far more expensive plan than my current one, with insurance and an ‘upfront fee’ of £150. ‘So I’m signing up for another two years, paying more every month, how does any of this BS constitute an upgrade?’ I ask, ‘and what the hell is an upfront fee anyway?’ Eventually, he decides he will waive the made-up fee and for a small extra charge promises my phone will be with me the next day, but he is a pathological liar and two days later, still no phone. This time, I try the online ‘Chat to us’ option instead which is every bit as torturous, minus being waterboarded by Ed Sheeran ‘onhold’ music. An hour later, and having repeated my name, postcode and first and third digits of my password approximately 753 times not only do I not care if I ever get my new phone, I think I might never communicate with anyone over the phone again and return to the lost art of letter writing. And then the moral of the story dawns on me. The phone in my hand still works, it’s slow and a bit flaky, but so am I. I should have been happy with my lot.