My phoneline nightmare continues with BT

I thought my nightmares with a phone company would cease when I left the horrible Talk Talk. I was wrong.

The switch over to BT which was heralded with much personal fan fare hit the snag of the landline not actually working. This was sorted out by a lengthy engineer visit on Saturday morning.

After that I had to call up the BT billing department and request they actually give me the services I'd ordered. You see I'd set up direct debit payment and the added service of free international calls. The initial bill had an extra £4.50 due to no direct debit set up and no hint of an international call pack. Talking to the rep on the phone, I had my BT order confirmation email in front of me, asking why I didn't get what I'd ordered and they'd confirmed.

Is it so hard for a company to actually do the one thing they're supposed to be good at? BT are a phone company, as much as they want to do the internet (don't even get me started on how horrible their packages for that are), they are the provider of landlines to the majority.

So far they've screwed up at every turn.

Bright light at the end of the Talk Talk tunnel

I managed to re-sign up with Be internet last night. I was worried that my connection would take 10 working days, as I was originally told. This would seriously impact trying to arrange things for our trip which is in about... 11 working days.

Thankfully I received a text and email today informing me that connection would be on the 6th of May which isn't even 10 calendar days. Oh joy.

On top of that, they're giving me three months free and refunding me the £40 cancellation charge. So I get to be rid of Talk Talk and their horrible service and get 3 months free internet for my troubles. Something's finally worked out for me.

Talk Talk phone problems

My month long fight with Talk Talk is ALMOST over. My new account with BT was supposed to take effect yesterday, however there was a snag.

Checking the phone even this morning, there's no dial tone. The BT website assures me the account and line are set up. Having called 151, I've NOW been assured there's probably a fault on the line. I can't help thinking this is the telecom version of the flaming bag of dog poo left on my door step by Talk Talk.

I now have to plug in a corded handset into the sockets at home to test whether they work. I don't have a corded handset. So it's off to Tesco at lunch to find the cheapest corded handset known to man.

When that's sorted, they're sending an engineer around, so I get to take a day off work for that. Oh JOY!

All this and we're now internet-less at home, which doesn't sit right with me for a number of reasons.

Will this fight with Talk Talk - arguably the worst telecoms provider ever - ever end? And how much is it going to continue to cost me?

Depressing as...

Everywhere I look in the news and on people's faces, there's tales of gloom. Inflation here, drain on that, it's enough to make you give up.

Having read the paper today, there was a tale that blended the sky-high price of petrol with the sky-high price of food materials, with the conclusion that nothing is coming down in price any time soon. Farmers' costs are up, not enough food is being grown for food (thank you bio-fuel) and the end supermarket price is enough to make you cry.

£1.10 per litre of petrol, a loaf of bread is now over £1. It's just purely depressing, especially at a time of property depression and uncertainty in the market in general.

If this were a video game, I would have given up months ago and hit reset. Maybe the outcome would have been different.