Broadband battle

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.