‘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. But now I was a Vodafone customer. ‘So what?’ you might think. Oh, how like a lamb to the slaughter I went, dialling 118 000 — the number, I now realise, of the beast.
The cheerful lady found the Sky customer services number instantly and said the words that would seal my fate: ‘Do you want me to connect you?’
Can I make clear that she most definitely did not say, ‘Do you want me to bankrupt you?’ She may have said something about call charges. But if I had properly digested what they were I wouldn’t have continued. She must have said them in that sing-songy voice so I didn’t really digest their meaning.
Why else would I have hung on my mobile phone as Sky took a long time to answer, playing me a jolly tune? And then a jolly man asked me to identify myself.
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