Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

I have not had the best of days today, and it was made worse by a phone call I’ve just had from BT. Let me just say that it really annoys me when you get called by your service provider about deals and offers. When I was at uni, it was Virgin – they called me on a number of occasions about some sort of package where I could get television and phone included, whereas I only had the broadband. The thing is, it is rather easy to cancel broadband when you finish the year and move out – but the phone, and the TV is another matter. And then you have to consider the fact that there is always a minimum contract agreement, which would go on far longer than my tenancy.

It might sound pathetic, but it just annoys me. Being called by BT, with them offering me some supposedly fantastic deals on their new BT home phones, it annoys me. I have been using BT here for a while now, and they have been okay. The internet is sometimes quite slow, we sometimes get stung on the occasional phone bill, but for the most part they have been okay. But that doesn’t mean I want to get called about new phones. If I want new phones, I can shop around for them myself.

There are so many specialists and websites, and shops out there – places like this telephone system website – that make it so easy to get that sort of thing anyway, that now more than ever you don’t need people selling you things down the phone. It’s the same with internet. You have telecoms and the like, but more than that, you have television adverts, you have the internet in general: you can use the internet to research the internet, and find the deals you want. If you want sdsl internet, you can research and get sdsl internet.

So rather than go through the process of turning them down, I simply hung up. And after the day I’ve had today, it felt quite good, too!