As I type these words, I am listening to a selection of “easy listening classics” while waiting to get through to the customer services department of Sky Broadband. I have been trying to get through to a human being for about a week now. I thought “easy listening classics” might mean half an hour of Pachelbel’s “Canon” but instead I’m getting lots of slushy ballads. “You’re my downfall, you’re my muse,” croons someone I can’t look up on my laptop because it has decided not to connect to the internet any more. Which is my problem. “You’re crazy and I’m out of my mind,” he sings. This is a more or less accurate summary of my feelings.
Last year I wrote about my travails with Virgin. The reason I got fed up with them was because it was almost completely impossible to get through to a human being. “Go to Sky,” said Ben, “their customer service is really good.” And it was: I got through to a person very quickly. Since then, though, they have changed their contact procedures and it has taken me several threatening tweets, encounters with communication bots called “Natalie”, endless closed loops of pre-recorded voices, and stabbing uselessly at the keypad on the phone only to be hung up on (“Thank you for calling Sky. Goodbye”) to finally get to the point where I might – might – get through to explain my predicament, which is quite simple, really, to someone who was of woman born. Meanwhile, I am in my 21st minute of suffering the kind of music I hate most on Earth and I do not know if I will be able to get through this without having a seizure.
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