Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!
Listening to: Embarrassment from the album "The Heavy Heavy Hits" by Madness
I just cancelled my BT 'Anytime' package and subscribed to the Freeserve Anytime Package. I use Anytime in inverted commas for BT's service because, to be frank it was anything but. It might as well have been called "BT: Sometimes" or "BT: When we feel like it" because it actually had an hourly cap on 'unmetered internet access'. At the end of the day you were just paying £15 a month for 150 hours and there was no escaping that simple fact. Unlimited access my ass.
Freeserve was also cheaper, I do have a few worries - mostly with connection speed but to be honest it doesn't seem too bad thus far and Kev who's Warcraft III Battlenet Connection I have based my assumptions on, does live in Scotland which may account for his not-so-great ping times to Bnet.
Anyhow I called up to cancel my account and was entirely served by Overseas Customer Relations Executives. Basically BT is so cheap that they outsource as much of their switchboard as is possible to India. The people there speak very good English and you get the feeling they are more on the ball than the native BT assistants because they probably are - most likely with University degrees and such - but are getting paid more to speak English at a switchboard than as a manager or Junior executive. This is especially true in the Philippines were hundreds of incredibly smart people work as domestic helpers around the world because they can earn more than they would using their specialized skills in the Philippines - Our last Alma (domestic helper) named Mila (who we miss terribly at the moment) was something like a chief of operations at a factory in the Philippines and earned twice as much doing our ironing.
So I spoke to two Indian customer service people and got my account cancelled :) When they asked me why I wanted to cancel my account I had to resist saying "because its total shit!" and instead had to go for the more diplomatic "Service that doesn't suit my needs/features I never use etc etc".
Anyhow I'm all Freeserve'd up now so its back to marathon internet usage.. Wait.. Did I ever actually stop doing that?
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at July 27, 2003 03:47 PM