After last year's 70th birthday extravaganza in Covent Garden I decided that this year's celebrations would be somewhat muted - to say nothing of the fact that after several days working in the garden over the last couple of weeks, even my aches had aches, and I wasn't up to anything too exciting or active.
A quiet start to the day:
We located a previously unvisited branch of Costa on the nearby industrial estate and gave them our business instead - boy, do we oldies know how to live...
Home, to laze in front of the TV, eating some birthday chocolate. But then - the high spot of the day thus far: a text from a real, live person at BT, letting me know that they would be calling me within 5 minutes to discuss my on-going dispute.
In the last 20 years I don't think I have had one contract renewal that has been straightforward and problem-free, and this year's was no different. On 3rd May, as part of the renegotiation discussions, a BT operative had suggested that I switch our two mobiles to EE (much touted to now be part of BT), and that the cost of doing so would be a total of £16 per month for two SIMs with unlimited minutes and 20GB each of data. Since this was £4 a month less than the current cost of our two BT SIMs, and significantly better than the 6GB of data we currently get for each phone, I readily agreed to the swap. Sadly, subsequent discussions with other BT and EE operatives established that no such offer was available, and that the SIMS would actually cost me £20 per month instead. My subsequent complaint to BT of having been mis-sold a product hinged on someone listening to the tape of that conversation and confirming the discrepancy between what I was initially offered and what I would have ended up with.
A pleasant young man phoned and confirmed that, yes, the call had been listened to and, yes, I had been promised a product that was not available - but he suggested that I could forget about the offer that had been made, keep my mobiles with BT (for the current £20 a month) and he would give me a £50 credit as a token of goodwill.
I think he was a little downhearted when I pointed out that my current data limit was only 6Gb per SIM (which he insisted he could not change), and that his monetary offer would only half cover the cost discrepancy between what I thought I would get and what I would actually get... We started again.
Like a cross between Rumpole of the Bailey and Kavanagh QC I took every opportunity I could to assure him that my displeasure was in no way directed at him, but was, nonetheless, very real. I pointed out the irony of an advertising campaign that made so much of BT and EE being one big happy family contrasting so clearly with the actuality of two completely independent, autonomous divisions, with neither side able to offer flexibility in relation to the services or pricing offered by the other.
Finally, I put him out of both our miseries. "I want the EE SIMs because they offer more than three times as much data as I'm currently getting, but I don't want to pay £4 a month more for the privilege of doing that. Why don't BT discount my broadband and landline package by £4 a month, so the total for all the services comes out to what I was expecting anyway?".
A pause.
"Those tariffs are fixed, and I can't change them".
Another pause.
"But I could offer you a goodwill credit of £4 per month for the next 24 months".
As before, and again conscious of the fact that the conversation was being recorded, I echoed back what I thought we had agreed. He confirmed it. And ten minutes later I had a text message to confirm the credit in my account. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and that, folks, was nearly the highlight of my 71st birthday.
Except it wasn't - the real highlight was going to our local for dinner:
which I enjoyed even more after the waiter told me it was comped because it was my birthday:
Home to browse through my birthday CDs, and to reflect on the fact that I haven't yet actually finished listening to those I got for Christmas. I must be slowing down.
