TG on the phone to British Telecom about the New Place, having gone through their tedious routeing system several times and visiting Mombai, Glasgow, and Newcastle in the process.
“I’d like to swap over the line at the New Place to our name please.”
“We haven’t got a line at that address.”
“But I’m using it at the moment.”
“There is no line at that address.”
“I’m using it at the moment. I know it's yours; I've seen the bills.”
“I don't know what you want me to say. It's my job to know about this, we have no line at this address - it must belong to another provider.”
“Is there any way that you/we can check whose it is.?”
“No”
"There must be."
"There isn't."
"There must be."
"There isn't."
"There must be."
"There isn't. An Engineer will have to come out to connect you. You will have to pay £124.95 connection charge."
This conversation is repeated with a different operator, having checked that they were BT bills with OhJ next door.
“Oookay, I'll order a new line.” ………. which was duly ordered.
The TG contacted Ofcom.
The TG was allocated direct contact with a special adviser in the Chairman's Office who tracked down the problem [apparently the whole system had been changed on June 6th and a lot of information didn’t make the transition] keeping the TG informed of what was happening on an almost continual basis. We were allocated a new number which was working within hours, the charge of £125 for a new line was dropped, a £66 rebate will come off the next bill and a large bunch of flowers arrived the day after everything was sorted out. Oh, and if you ever need to discover who your telephone provider is, dial 150.
The TG’s powers are truly awesome and should not be taken lightly.
I, of course, am delighted – I won’t have to buy her any flowers this year – reeeeeeesult! – and I will be able to get broadband up and running so I can blog while building.
