The Ranting Room

^^^

Aw! Bless the Swarb

OK James, I'll have a go...

This one only really applies to the English among us, so my apologies to those of a foreign persuasion...

Three letters representing the peak of British cable television:

NTL

Early last week and for no apparent reason, we started to lose TV/Cable channels; after a couple of days, I summoned up the courage, set aside a long period of time, sat down on the sofa with a cold drink & a cigarette... and phoned them.

After the usual 10 minutes or so of being arbitrarily cut off for no reason & therefore having to go through the usual "if you want to be patronised, press 1, if you want a 17 year old drone to insult your intelligence, press 2, if you are obsessive compulsive, press 3 repeatedly" type menus, I was eventually put on hold for a further 15 minutes (having to listen to a room full of psychotically drunken session musicians murdering a selection of popular songs on a broken stylophone), after which a young lady for whom the words "brain stem death" were not so much a diagnosis as the basis of her CV advised me I would have to phone a different number.

Bcks!

So I did...

+++new cold drink, new cigarette, quick wee+++

After the usual waiting period (see above re menus, inexplicable cutoffs etc), I eventually got through to a very nice man from NTL's "technical services team" who I suspect was sitting in a cubicle in a faceless office block somewhere in the outskirts of Mumbai - with no disrespect to the man and no underlying agenda here, English was neither his first, nor second language, and he was definitely reading from a script...

written by an idiot...

with no knowledge of English.

Somehow, by the use of sign language (well, I was gesticulating wildly at this point, anyway) I managed to explain the problem, at which point he asked me to re-boot the cable-box; I told him I already had, & he said he was going to send a booster signal at the same time; so I did so...

...and we immediately lost all channels.

Bcks! (#2)

The "engineer" then said there must be a problem with the box itself & he would send an engineer round that afternoon, at which point I said something to the effect of "I don't know what time it is there, but here, it's 8:15 in the evening"

+++sigh+++

Aaaaaaaaanyway - eventually we arranged an engineer to call after 5:00 pm later this week (approx 10 days after the problem started).

Three hours later, the box re-booted itself & since then we've had no problem.

Oh, for F's sake!

There's an hour of my life I'll never see again.




That OK, James??

James,

Your story reminds me of the time that I was 'cold- called' by a company selling conservatories. I was at a loose end and agreed to meet one of their reps.

I made certain that I was out on the day that he was supposed to come around...

We live upstairs in a converted house.

Edited by Man Erg - March 27 2007 at 04:06

Your mom wouldn't let you have that sequin cape again? Look, I KNOW that Rick Wakeman's sweat is all over that mother f**ker, but I don't think we can clone him. For various legal, moral, medical AND decency reasons.

Oh. Okay. Then what am I gonna do with ALL THIS neuro-genetics equipment?!?

I always find walking down the road stark naked, covered in bloodstains, carrying a crucible in one hand & a black cockrel in the other tends to dissuade them   

You should have given him three nails & asked him to put you up for the night

It definitely wasn't Mandy.

This guy seemed more Tory than Mandelson.

I don't think this guy was of the born-again variety though...   I hope he doesn't think he's an immaculate conception.

I don't think drugs have ever been in his system, if they had, he'd not have accosted me in street (or maybe he would have, but for completely different reasons!).

I feel sorry for him though.  It's his loss in the end.  At least vicars and suchlike don't do that.  I think he's actually giving Christianity a very bad name, but who am I to complain?

He'd be a perfect guest on Jeremy Kyle.


Edited by Geck0 - March 28 2007 at 08:23