For nearly a year now, I’ve been promising my father I will brave the BT call centre to order him broadband. He knew that what he was asking me to do was a far greater thing than any father should ask of his daughter, so when the day finally dawned for me to make good on my pledge he volunteered to sit down with me as I made the call. Perhaps it was a good thing that we went in together, for within seconds of dialling the eighth circle of hell on speakerphone we were clinging to each other in sheer terror.
Something called Talk and Surf was £15.99 a month for 12 months, but also, somehow, £7.49 for three months then £14.99 for the rest of the 18-month contract, or possibly it was none of those things.
Something else called Talk and Surf Plus was £19.99 a month, or £110 a quarter, but my notes show that the figures £20.28 and £27 were also relevant. I have no idea why.
Another package was £86.94 a quarter including weekday calls, but not making calls to mobiles at weekends, or possibly only at weekends. Another was £108 a quarter, with a special discounted rate of three months free. Only it wasn’t three months free, because when she read the small print there were ‘line rental charges’ of £12.79 a month on the discounted period, which then made the other deal, or possibly the one before it, look better.
So we sweated through more explanations of the various terms and conditions and I had to put my head between my legs and dad turned a worrying shade of bluey-white and mum brought us glasses of water.
The lady in the eighth circle was now trying to explain the concept of free land-line calls of up to an hour, but not really just up to an hour because you could also go over the hour as long as you hung up and redialled and started the call again. You could also phone 0800 numbers and 0870 numbers but not 0845 numbers, or it might have been the other way round.
Largely to make it stop I blurted out ‘Talk and Surf!’ as my father sat gripping the sides of his seat and looking like he did when I first asked him if I could have my ears pierced. (I say ‘first’ because he still won’t let me.)
‘Right,’ said the lady. ‘I’ll just put that through.’
‘Or Talk and Surf Plus…dad, what do you think?’
‘Er. Yes, that one,’ said dad. ‘Or the other one.’
‘OK. Talk and Surf Plus,’ I said.
‘Right, I’ll just book that…’ said the lady.
‘Or just the Talk and Surf. No Talk and Surf Plus…No, Talk and Surf…Oh, God! Which one would you have? Please, help us!’
As I slumped on to the table and started dribbling, dad took charge with heroic decisiveness. ‘Let’s go for that one,’ he said.
‘Yes, you’re right, I’m sorry. That one…Which one?’
‘Talk and something?’
I have no idea which one we got in the end. But our ordeal was by no means over because we still had to order the installation. Having myself wrestled for several weeks with the fiendishly complex little black box called a home hub that BT ridiculously claims is ‘easy to install’, I was determined my father would have an engineer.
She informed me that would be £49.99 and there would be a £4.99 post and packing charge to send me the hub. ‘But if the engineer is coming,’ I said, ‘can’t he just bring the hub?’
‘Oh, no. We need to send it in the post.’
She then booked the appointment and informed me that the home hub would be arriving on the same day but I wasn’t to worry if it didn’t arrive by the time the engineer got here because he would have plenty of hubs in his van.
‘But you just told me he couldn’t bring us a hub. You said we had to pay £4.99 p&p.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, it just seems to me that it cannot be the case that we must have a hub delivered and that it is entirely unimportant whether or not the hub arrives.’
‘The hub has to be delivered. Shall I proceed? So, to recap…’
And she went through our order again and we had to call for more water because the package she described was totally different from absolutely every single permutation we had hitherto discussed.
‘What about the three-month discount period?’ my father whispered.
‘It doesn’t matter, dad,’ I said, looking at the deep wrinkles that had opened up on my hands during the course of the phone call. ‘At least we still have our health, and a few good years left.’
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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