Now this is something rather special. It’s long & in places tends to the incoherent, but it has the ring of the truly authentic letter. It was sent to me by my son Lindsay (who has co-starred in one or two of the more affecting pictures taken of Reuben). I must check its provenance with him. It concerns one of the largest telephone, TV & broadband providers in the country, NTL. The contents are self-explanatory, but I would just remark before releasing you to the letter that if you have ever been aggravated by Radio Userland’s after care service, read this & repent…
Dear Cretins,
I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2004, when I signed up for your 3-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, and telephone. During this three month period I have encountered an inadequacy of service that I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions.
Please allow me to provide specific details so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative and seek to rectify these difficulties, or, more likely, I suspect, so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you fritter away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog down the corridor.
Right. Here we go. My initial installation was cancelled without warning before or notification during the time allocated, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he simply didn’t turn up, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music plus interjections from the even more infuriating Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website. For fuck’s sake – HOW?!
I alleviated the boredom to some small degree by playing with my testicles for a while – shifting them to the left, shifting them to the right - an activity at which you are no doubt both more familiar and highly adept than I.
The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools - such as a drill-bit, and his cerebrum. But two weeks later, my cable modem still hadn’t arrived. After several further telephone calls (to be precise, 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks) my modem arrived - a total of six weeks after I had requested it and begun to pay for it.
So eventually I was able to get online and begin to enjoy the rich benefits of broadband connection. Well, I estimate that the downtime of your internet servers is roughly 35%. These offline intervals usually occur during the hours between about 6pm and midnight, Monday to Friday and/or during most of the useful periods over the weekend. Skilful and sensitive scheduling there on the part of your engineers as they engage in the ceaseless task of raking out the embers of burned out server terminals or locating the cable that some clumsy bastard has tripped over during one of those journeys to the bog for a fag break.
And I am still waiting for my telephone connection. Yes, that’s right – still waiting. I have made nine telephone calls on my mobile to your no-help line this week and have been transferred through a variety of bored Scottish youths, all of whom are, no doubt, highly skilled bollock jugglers and very little else.
During this process I have been informed the following:
· that a telephone line is available and someone will call me back;
· that no telephone line is available but someone will call me back;
· that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is, in fact, available (and then I was cut off);
· that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then I was redirected to an answer machine, which informed me that your office was closed);
· that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then I was redirected to my old ‘phone line companion the infuriating Scottish robot woman);
· oh, and endless variations on the above, the relating of which would simply reduce me to wracking sobs within seconds…
By now I assume that you are no longer reading this letter as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customer calls to briefly answer before throwing the complainant to that fucking woman. Either that or you’re simply absorbed in another one of those crucially important testicle shifting moments. Frankly I don't care. It’s far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print whilst imagining you lashed to your desk in front of me than to shout them at your mindbendingly awful hold music. (It is ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ by Blue Oyster Cult, isn’t it?) So forgive me, therefore, if I continue burbling in a vacuum.
I thought BT were shit; that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations; that no-one, anywhere, ever, could be more paralysingly indifferent, witlessly unhelpful or oafishly obstructive in delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose NTL. That, and because, well, there isn't anyone else, is there?
Well, here’s the final verdict: you are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum. You are incompetents of the very highest order of slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging simian inefficiency. British Telecom – consummate wankers though they are - shine like brilliant beacons of success across the filthy, pus-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy.
Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you do likewise and abandon forthwith any future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so manifestly and catastrophically failed to deliver. Any attempts to suggest, hint, imply or recommend that I pay you one small, copper coin will be rewarded with fire, flood and pestilence.
I do, however, enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cat's litter tray, as an eloquent and fitting expression of my utter and complete contempt for NTL and all its works. I sincerely hope that they have not become desiccated during transit - they were satisfyingly moist at the time of posting and I would be bitterly disappointed were you not to experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture.
Have a nice day. May it be your last in this earthly realm. And when you step off that primrose path to the Lower Depths, may it be to the constantly repeated strains of ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’.
Yours utterly, utterly pissed off
GLOSSARY.
BT. British Telecom, a rival company formed from the de-nationalised telecommunications industry.
B&H. Benson & Hedges, the cigarette of choice of all who have yet to discover Marlboro Lite.
Bog. The john.
Wankers. Those who engage in the Sin of Onan, or anyone perceived to be of more than average idiocy.
11:21:54 PM 
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