Broadband

There was an article on the BBC site the other day talking about how hard it was to switch broadband service providers. I didn’t really pay much attention to it. I was probably busy doing something sexy and glamorous with all the other beautiful people. But I discovered for myself the joys of service switching when I finally decided that it was time to attempt to get a broadband speed capable of downloading an email in less than a week.

Y’see, for a couple of years I’ve been with TalkTalk. The service was initially very tempting. Good price and the speed was pretty much equivalent to what everyone else was offering. Seemed like a no-brainer, I thought, quickly realising that thinking this showed I had no brain. Anyway, I signed up and set up my email and billing and all that guff. A few days later I was connected and all seemed well for a few months. Then I lost the net for about a week. The useless customer “service” people at TalkTalk said they didn’t guarantee a service. What? A service provider that doesn’t guarantee to provide a service? But it’s your one thing. It’s what you do. It is your purpose as a broadband provider to provide broadband… This line of reasoning got me nowhere because, presumably, I had deviated from the usual responses that the customer “service” agent was expecting. A couple of months later and the same thing happened. A few months later and it happened again. Like a lot of people I really rely on the net for my work, as well as for shopping and wanking.

Also around this time other companies were bringing out faster speeds and better bundles but I was tied in to TalkTalk by then. Oh well, I thought magnanimously, it’ll all be fine. They can’t stay this shit in the light of all the competition.

Over the next year I had more drops in service and my connection seemed to get slower. I called them up and they said (I may be paraphrasing here…), “oh, please don’t leave us! We’ll get lonely. How about we move you up to our next tier of service with quicker speeds and a slightly larger download limit.” Download limit? You never even told me you’d introduced one. I agreed - it wasn’t going to cost me any more. The next day I logged into my router to check what marvellous download speed I could now expect! It had gone up by a pathetically small amount to somewhere just over 1 meg. Forgive me, TalkTalk, if I don’t pop open a bottle of Bolly and toast your marvellousness.

Then, a few months ago, I decided to get Virgin TV. This was mainly due to the Freeview signal in this area being of such poor quality that trying to watch a programme would usually be like watching a badly edited psychotic slideshow of digital noise and farting sounds. Just recently I figured out that I could ditch TalkTalk and get broadband roughly ten times faster for less than I was currently paying. I had to wait for my contract to end… These past few months have been painful as I watched the calendar with increasing frustration - exacerbated by getting a PS3 that seems intent on updating itself every half an hour.

To cut a long rant very slightly shorter, I am expecting the chap from Virgin to come round and plug a box in sometime next week. This will please me. Not quite enough to erase the pain of having such a crap service for so long and certainly not enough to erase the memory of talking to the customer “service” person about cancelling my contract. A brief summary of that conversation follows:

“Hello, this is TalkTalk. How can I infuriate you today?”

“I’d like to cancel my account with you”

“God, really? Are you mad? Did you not know we won a customer choice award?”

“Blimey, you must have some really thick customers”

“Well, clearly we do. But still, I can’t imagine why you’d want to leave us. We can offer you fast connection!”

“No you can’t”

“It says on my computer screen that we can”

“Trust me. Your broadband service is slower than a retarded tortoise trying to climb an oily pylon in a hurricane”

“How about we move you to our faster speed?”

“Yeah, you did that. I didn’t notice”

“Oh. How about I come round and grease your private parts?”

“I’d rather suck on a hedgehog”

“Are you sure you want to cancel your account?”

“Yep”

“Really?”

“Yep”

“You do realise that Virgin broadband is powered by Devil’s jizz and all their equipment explodes in the presence of children?”

“Yep”

“And what if Virgin go bankrupt?”

“They’ll get bought by another company - it’s happened several times already”

“But you won’t have a BT line anymore”

“I never ring anyone and I rarely answer the phone”

“But you have caller ID!”

“Yep. And a life.”

“Oh. Is there nothing I can say to convince you to stay?”

“Look, this is getting embarrassing. I’m embarrassed for you. All this pleading… It’s worse than my mother when I left home”

“You won’t have a mother anymore if you go to Virgin. They will KILL HER!!”

“Fuck off”

“Certainly sir. My job sucks and my life isn’t much better. I’m just off to slice my neck open. Have a nice day”

That is a condensed and slightly fictional version of a 25 minute phone call I endured with these morons. Goodbye TalkTalk. I really won’t miss you at all. And along the way I’ll be telling everyone not to sign up to you in the first place. Oh and to anyone saying, “Why didn’t you go with BT?” I would say, “it’s too expensive for what you get and the TV package is arse”. And similarly, to anyone who says, “What about Sky?” I would say, “It’s too expensive, too full of shit, the on-demand service is pony and it’s owned by a right wing arsehole.” I know Virgin isn’t perfect but if it isn’t better than TalkTalk I will happily eat this blog, naked whilst strapped to an angry camel who’s wearing a tank top made of broken glass, razorblades and vinegar.

Oh, and the one time I did have a problem with Virgin, they immediately slapped £30 on my account so I could rent a bunch of movies from their, frankly, excellent on-demand service. And I don’t work for Virgin. And Richard Branson is a nob. There. Balance.