Telephones
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Introduction |
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| Letter to Telephone Company
xxxxxxx Communications 9 May 1996 Dear Sirs, Customer Account No xxxxxxxxxxx I refer to your letter of 30 April. BT say "It's good to talk" - I find that it's cheaper to write, plus, I find that if I try to talk in block capitals, I get a sore throat. So, you want to re-instate my service and charge me £15.00 for the privilege, eh? You must be joking! I admit that my payment of the bill was not too prompt, but your "Credit Agency" ACTIS continued to send me threatening letters for 5 weeks after it was paid (although I notice that the cheque was cleared through the bank quickly enough). I received a curt apology, but nothing near abject enough. So how about it, eh? £15.00 worth of abject apology sounds about right to me, so here's the deal - I pay nothing, and you reconnect the service. Alternatively, I pay nothing, and you don't reconnect the service - it's up to you - I couldn't care less. Have you ever wondered why some people grudge paying bills? Sometimes, it's because they feel that they are paying for something which is not really worthwhile. Mercury was the Roman god of merchandise, theft and eloquence, and was also the messenger of the gods. I suppose that means he could sell snowballs to an Eskimo, empty the money out of his pockets, convince him that he'd had a great time, and then tell everybody else, and also had a messenger with wings on his trainers to take the cheques to the bank. I don't see how this relates in any way to the standard of service you provide, or your advertising, do you? Finally, your ACTIS branch needs a new answering machine. The present message sounds like it's been gargled down a pipe by a Dalek in a busy pub, with a party in the background, and with somebody sitting on the phone receiver. Thomas Edison achieved better reproduction with a bit of tin foil and a knitting needle. I left a message I think), but nobody called me back. Still, the future's bright, eh? Yours faithfully, They replied and said that in the circumstances they would waive the £15 reconnection charge, and would be pleased to be of further assistance should I continue to use the service. I didn't use it at all, but 3 months later they sent me a bill out of the blue for another quarterly rental, So I sent them this: |
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| The Second Letter
xxxxxxx Communications 22 August 1996 Dear Sirs, Customer Account No xxxxxxxx I refer to our correspondence in April and May of this year. You wrote to me and said that you would re-connect the service free if I “should choose to continue using it”. I chose not to continue using it. I haven’t even tried your special dialling code to see if it’s connected or not, so deep is my disinterest in resuming any contract with you. I recently received an account for the period to mid-August, and note that you appear, mistakenly, to have decided, of your own accord, and without any confirmation from me of my choice, to re-connect the service. The account includes a quarterly charge of £2.94. Well, that was your choice. Your letter was clearly conditional on me choosing to continue using the service. Because of your attempt to extract £15.00 (which you clearly didn’t really need) from me, I chose not to continue, by default, so I am not paying a charge for a service which I didn’t want. I will pay the £4.78 for call charges incurred previously. Yours faithfully, |
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| Result
Well that was easy! That was the last I heard from that company - I don't even get random mailing shots from them any more.
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The sales pitch was that, for a small monthly fee, this company could save you a fortune on your phone bills, for certain types of calls. They weren't my main telephone company, and I found that I didn't use their service very often. I forgot to pay one of the bills, and they sent no reminders, just a very nasty letter from a "Credit Agency" (which turned out to be a branch of their company)and I paid straight away. Nevertheless, the letters kept coming in, threatening court action - another case of the left hand and the right hand in a non-communicative mood. Eventually I sent them this...
