When troubles come in fours
Regular readers may recall that at the beginning of this year I suffered an attack of apophenia – the belief that bad things happen in threes. Well, I can now put that myth well and truly to bed. Personal disasters do not come in threes – they come in fours!
Last Monday morning, when I had clocked up my apophenia allocation, I began to relax. After all, it was my birthday, so surely my bad luck had run its course.
A few days earlier I had picked up only my second speeding ticket in more than half a century of driving. My wife and I were travelling to Christchurch and to alleviate the boredom we were partaking in a newspaper general knowledge quiz. I hasten to add that Jill, in the passenger seat, was filling in the answers and I was keeping my eyes firmly on the road – but not, unfortunately, on the speedometer.
As I mentally wrestled with questions on geography and Greek mythology, I allowed my speed to creep higher and higher. It wasn’t until I saw the flashing lights of an oncoming mufti police car that I switched attention to my speed and saw I was at least 14kmh over the limit. A stern talk, an $80 fine and 10 demerit points later, we continued our journey with less enthusiasm for the quiz.
But this was just the beginning of my troubles. Next day the screen of my mobile phone suddenly developed a spot of purple in the lower corner. This gradually crept over the rest of the screen until I was unable to read a thing. My phone was going through a purple patch but I certainly wasn’t. I had to find my way to the nearest Spark shop without the aid of Google maps.
I knew a third disaster was imminent and, sure enough, a couple of days later, when we arrived home, we discovered our landline had stopped working. Nothing was obviously wrong, so it was necessary to engage with Spark once again. This time on my new mobile.
Spark customers – indeed, anyone wanting to contact a big organisation – will know only too well that you can no longer expect a real human to answer your phone call. You are subjected to endless menus, each one assuring you you can go online to solve your problem. In other words – sort it yourself.
I quickly established I couldn’t sort it myself, so I booked a return call from Spark for 30 minutes later. To cut a tortuously long story short, it was the first of several such phone calls that involved a couple of very pleasant women with foreignsounding names directing me to unplug and then plug in leads and also take photos of our fibre box.
As this involved clambering over and behind a bed I became convinced I could have had a career as a contortionist. The bed in question has a particularly springy mattress so I felt like I was on an adult bouncy castle, which made photography somewhat difficult.
But my newfound flexibility did not result in a satisfactory conclusion. Eventually Spark realised I was not the man for the job and agreed to send out a proper technician, something I felt they could have done 48 hours earlier.
He decided the fault lay in the fibre box, changed it and went away after assuring me that once Spark had done something at its end our phone line would be restored. Four days after this and despite being ‘‘escalated’’ – a euphemism for being put in the too-hard basket – we still, as I write this, have no phone line.
And the fourth thing? Oh, my birthday post included a $700 ACC bill, which I think is somewhat disproportionate considering my sole paid employment these days is writing this column. But maybe ACC has got wind of my unpaid and exacting employment for Spark.