Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

118 000 is, I now realise, the number of the beast

It led me to a 26-minute call that cost £134.08, including VAT. Great balls of fire.

issue 07 February 2015

‘Orange 1-1-8 thousand how may I help you?’ said the cheerful voice. Carefree as you like, I asked for the number for Sky customer services to report my parents’ broken digibox.

This was back on Christmas eve morning. I had been walking the dog around Kenilworth Castle when my dad rang in a panic saying the Sky box had broken, and, well, we had rather hoped to watch some television over Christmas. So I took it upon myself to sit in my car and make a phone call to sort it out.

But when I searched Sky’s website on my iPhone I could not find a number for customer services. I found numbers for all sorts of other things including ‘Report a deceased account holder’, but nothing at all for living account holders with deceased Sky boxes.

Which was why I decided to call directory inquiries. The only number for directory inquiries I could remember was one I must have had in my head from when I was an Orange customer.

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