Much excitement – and it’s only just past lunchtime.
Firstly, the missing spare part for our boiler FINALLY showed up today and John-the-Heating-Engineer shot over and bunged it in. The central heating worked for about a nanosecond – or at least long enough for the aforementioned John-the-Heating-Engineer to vanish down the drive in a spray of gravel – before collapsing again. Two heartbroken telephone conversations later, he was back, muttering darkly about “The idiot who last meddled with this thing …” (that would be him …). One final tweak and – SHAZAAM! We have heat.
Shortly before 1.00pm, the telephone rang. it was someone at BT confirming that they’d received a Transfer of Service request and that our BT service would terminate on the 17th of this month.
“But we didn’t ASK for a transfer of service!” we cried, pathetically. Plainly disbelieving us, the young (and it has to be said rather surly) young lady on the other end of the ‘phone insisted that Oh Yes We Had.
“Oh No We Haven’t … “
(You get the drift …).
Fast forward to the terribly helpful young man on the Freephone number Miss Surly gave us, who politely and patiently explained that we’d obviously fallen victim to a practice known as ‘Slamming’, which is basically when one of those irritating-as-all-hell telecoms companies who are always ringing up and pestering the life out of you about switching from BT actually switches your service without your express permission.
All sorted now, but really, how tiresome. I’m sure life was much easier when telephones were those cute things with whirly dials, and operators on the other end …






