How much do I charge BT?

First the good news. David phoned me on Thursday and he tried his best to reduce or remove the charges as outlined in my last blog entry. He couldn't change anything. I did ask about the deposit and how a credit check had caused this charge as I don't know of any previous debt. He told me that I was not a bad debtor but couldn't explain the reason for the charge. He was still looking for a better price for BT Vision when I had to tell him twice that there really was no reason to do so. I was going to go out and buy a recorder.

All I had wanted was the ability to pause live TV and to record those programmes that were not convenient for me to watch at the time. I had thought that BT Vision would provide me with this facility for £4 per month. It turned out that they tried to provide this with the ridiculous hidden costs of  £125 plus the £4 per month.

David did change my telephone number - well no he didn't. He was billing and it was the technical department that had to deal with me. Unfortunately they were busy and I was off to work and not able to phone them back until this afternoon. So, with an expected wait of 5 to 10 minutes I waited to speak to a real person and managed this after 15 minutes. They left me on hold for a further 10 minutes then told me that the number had to be changed by the billing department. He just had to check something. I did say that I had spoken to the billing department on Thursday and they wanted the technical department to deal with it. This didn't work and he put me on hold. After 33 minutes he had done his checking and repeated that he was putting me through to billing. I think I sounded like I was begging at this point as I repeated that I had spoken with them on Thursday.

After 40 minutes I spoke with someone from billing who dealt with my request for my old number within a couple of minutes and then told me it would take 24 working hours for it to be working. Now to me 24 working hours takes me to Wednesday or Thursday if you count a 9 to 5 working week from Monday to Friday. I couldn't believe this so asked what 24 hours meant. She explained that not all departments were working at weekend so I should have my old number by Monday evening, 60 of my hours and 24 of hers which must mean that her working hours are all the hours God gives but only from Monday to Friday. My call lasted 42 minutes.

It looks like I will receive a working landline not on the 9th August, but on Monday 3rd September, exactly six weeks after I requested it. She may have sensed my frustration (or it may be a routine question) and asked, for her personal feedback if I was happy with what she had done. I told her that she had been wonderful. Unfortunately she had no idea of the difficulties that I had encountered.

I have now bought a TV recorder for £89 and it does exactly what I want it to do. BT were going to charge me £35 for an engineer to visit me. I am going to provide them with a service by returning their BT Vision package when I get my number. How much should I charge them for a taxi to the post office and my time?

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