I had a knock on my door the other day from my neighbour, who proceeded to put her hands in the air and say;

“Yay… at last, I’ve got BT Infinity.”

“What you have it now…Wow….what’s it like?”

“Well I haven’t got it yet, but I have ordered it.”

Her naivety was so profound, I felt like hugging her and telling her not worry and that everything would be all right in the end. BT has had me on the brink of suicide more times than I can calculate so I wrote off this latest claim of super-fast Broadband as nothing more than delusional nonsense.

From dial-up to ADSL to Broadband, I have been perpetually attracted to houses that always seem to be the furthest away from the BT exchange, meaning that I apparently don’t have phone lines with enough power to generate a decent connection. My current rate of 0.5mb is not enough to fire up anything, unless of course, you are fan of watching a screen with “Buffering” or “Connection failed” written on it.

As hard as I tried to ignore the outrageous claim that was made by neighbour, it kept nagging away at me and in the end, I couldn’t help it, I just had to have a look. It’s just the way I am, if I was a cat, curiosity would have killed me years ago.

After a catalogue of debacles with BT in the past, I had vowed never to go near them again, choosing instead to stamp all over my own morals by using the Devil’s Media outlet, Sky. I hate what Sky stand for but I have learnt that I am shallow enough to accept that until a few weeks ago, their service was pretty much unrivalled.

That was until, presumably with some staff they had headhunted from BT, Sky teased me with their very own super-fast Broadband package, tempting me along the garden path to liberation before opening the gate and punching me squarely in the face.

After letters, congratulatory emails and packages coming in the post, SKY informed me by text, the day before the alleged installation, that they were actually lying and had actually been wasting all my time and effort filling out multiple online forms. No apology, nothing, just a brief conversation that basically said; “We thought you could get Super Dooper Broadband but you can’t”.  

So after a great deal of thought, I put all my previous trauma’s behind me and cleared my desk, disconnected my phones, shut the curtains and placed a mattress outside the back door to cushion the blow when I hurled my computer through the window. Yes, I did it, through my current super shite Broadband connection I went on to the BT Infinity website.

The first thing I was requested to do was to was input my phone number and post code before an agonising and tension filled wait whilst my line was checked.

“CONGRATULATIONS, YOU CAN NOW RECEIVE UNLIMITED BT INFINITY”

It was then that I lost the plot and proceeded, with untamed excitement, to press every button that said “Yes”. I was in a state of unadulterated hedonism that had me buying everything on the site; I was a salesman’s dream ending up with everything from a new set of twin phones to free weekend calls to Honduras.

Irrational Purchase: BT Twin Phones

Everything was so easy, especially the emptying of my bank account and within ten minutes I had email confirmation of my order. Surely it couldn’t be that easy could it?

Of course it couldn’t, because at the very bottom page there was a little line saying:

“So that you have no break in service, we’ll need to contact you to get your MAC code from your current broadband supplier so please have this ready in advance”

I did this and after finally getting through to Sky after fifteen minutes of being told how important I was to the backing sound of Mozart, I was, with a great deal of persuasion on my part, given the code, a number I will do my best lose in the coming week.

As I was given the MAC Code by the reluctant salesman, I was told in a tone that was mixed with bitterness and glee that BT would not be able to confirm whether I could receive Broadband Infinity until they pressed in these numbers to their system.

It was with this chilling news that it dawned on me that this particular show is not going to be over until I hear a fat lady singing.