gamboling.co.uk

I had the following conversation with Demon Internet’s “customer support”

Alex has joined the session
Connected to chat server, an agent will be with you shortly
CustomerService05 has joined the session
Alex: I have been limited by the fair use policy. I would like to have the limit removed. If I was to upgrade to Business 8000 would that work and how long would it take? Thanks, Alex.
CustomerService05: Hello, welcome to Demon Customer Service you are through to Priya.
Alex: Hi Priya
CustomerService05: Please bear with me while I load up your account details.
Alex: No problem
CustomerService05: Could you please confirm the security word on the account.Your’s mother’s name?
Alex: Xxxxx
CustomerService05: Sorry your mother’s name?
CustomerService05: Thank you.
CustomerService05: Please bear with me.
CustomerService05: The present Download usage for your service is 84.0GB
CustomerService05: You are not supposed to exceed more than 60GB
Alex: I have not received any message from Demon about this.
Alex: I contacted Technical support and then Technical support tested the line… THere was no fault on the line.
CustomerService05: Please stop downloading for next two weeks and the download usage should go back to 60Gb or evven lesser and then you can upgrade the service.
Alex: And then I asked him to check if the Fair Use Policy had kicked in.
CustomerService05: Faif Usage Polocy has nothing to do with the line test.
Alex: Which it had. But nobody had informed me.
CustomerService05: Since the service is restricted, you will not be able to upgrade the service.
CustomerService05: i am sorry for the inconvenience.
Alex: I have been a customer of Demon since 1995! And nobody from your company even had the grace to tell me that I was having a problem!
Alex: Why wasn’t I informed when I got to 60Gb?
Alex: I am seriously considering leaving Demon!
CustomerService05: Since the tool is under maintenance, the notification could not be sent.
Alex: But I offer to pay you more money a month to avoid this problem and you say I can’t!
Alex: Then I tried to call your customer service number which doesn’t work!
Alex: If the tool is under maintenence then you should inform your users that there is a risk that they could be going over their limit without realising
Alex: How long has the tool been under maintenance?
CustomerService05: Just about 2 weeks back.
Alex: And so because of your issue I have to now have no service for two weeks?
CustomerService05: You should have monitored it from your end as well.
Alex: Why? It says in your terms of service that I will be informed by e-mail.
CustomerService05: I agree. But since we had a problem we could not send the notification. However, I am sorry, the restrictions cannot be removed.
Alex: Why can I not upgrade my account at a cost of almost double per month to an account which doesn’t have the Fair Use Policy? That’s the other thing I don’t get?
CustomerService05: At this moment you will not be able to do that . Once the restrictions have been removed, you can upgrade the service.
Alex: Why can’t they be removed? Do Demon not control their own servers?
CustomerService05: It is system managed and cannot be removed manually.
Alex: Why can’t I do that? Why would I want to upgrade my service when I am not in this situation?
CustomerService05: Please stop downloading for a couple of weeks and then later you can upgrade the service.
CustomerService05: If you place the reqwuest for the upgrade now the request will be rejected in the first place.
Alex: Are you not a company with a plan to make money? I don’t understand this?
Alex: I can not see the point of this restriction? I want a service, you tell me it is not available from you at any price?
Alex: So I suppose I shall be taking my service to another provider. This is a great shame!
Alex: I have been a customer of Demon for 14 years!
CustomerService05: I am sorry but we will have to follow the procedures.
Alex: I can’t have no internet for 2 weeks! It’s simply unacceptable!
CustomerService05: Try checking the usage frequently and once you find it is gone beyond 60 Gb then you can place the requst.
Alex: I don’t blame you. I know there are procedures in place for some reason. But I would like to speak to somebody who has some discretion.
Alex: I won’t want to get the new package then I need to get myself out of this situation today. That’s what is so frustrating.
CustomerService05: You can speak to our Technical Suppot team on 0845 272 0040 -3
CustomerService05: That is the option 3.
Alex: Would they be able to remove the restriction?
CustomerService05: They will not be able to remove the restrictions but I suggest that you speak to them.
Alex: Thank you I will call them now.
CustomerService05: Is there anything else I can help you with?
Alex: I don’t think so 😦
CustomerService05: Thank you for using Demon Text Chat. If there is anything further we can assist you with please feel free to return to the textchat service. We are always striving to improve our services, in order to do this we value your comments. You can leave feedback by completing our Customer Satisfaction Survey at http://www.demon.net/customersurvey/
CustomerService05 has left the session

I then called Technical Support who agreed that it didn’t make much sense and forwarded me to Customer Support on the phone (which was luckily quite quick – presumably because they aren’t taking any external calls because the line is down).

I tried to explain to them my one central point:

Demon has two services (I care about):

Demon HomeOffice 8000 which costs £21.99 per month and has a fair usage policy.

and

Demon Business 8000 which costs £46.99 per month and has no fair usage policy.

But Demon won’t let me upgrade to the account without a fair usage policy until I am back in compliance with the fair usage policy of the account I want to leave.

Demon? I WANT TO GIVE YOU MONEY. If you say no to insanely loyal customers who get themselves into this situation and instead of leaving immediately say, “I know I’ll pay over double instead” you have LOST YOUR MINDS. And you are clearly not a business!

I think I shall be going to Be. Not that it solves my problem for the next two weeks.

Why wouldn’t Winslet weep when winning?
Wouldn’t we weep, when winning when weary?
Whatever we want, won? Wonderful.
Weak wells wash winkholes.

Imagine the situation. A person kindly offers you a tic tac. Normally when this happens you get two tic tacs and then you can chew one on each side of your mouth like a normal person. If they, for some strange reason, offer only one you can generally ask for a second without too much bother.

But what if you get given three? Now you can’t really ask for a fourth they are likely to accuse you of sheer unmitigated greed. And you can’t give one back that seems ungrateful.

But you clearly can’t eat an odd number of tic tacs. So what to do? I’m considering carrying a spare packet of tic tacs just in case such an incident occurs. So I can provide the extra one. The only problem is getting the spare out of your pocket and in to your mouth without the giver seeing. You wouldn’t want them to notice. Because then people would know how crazy you are. And you really want to save that for your blog.

So what would you do if you were given three tic tacs?

Is this a covert way of saying you want more of my tic tacs? You could just ask me, you know. I already know you’re crazy. – Ed

Our school correspondent, has written in with the following comment on the Andronov Temperature scale. If you want to see the previous articles on the subject they are here: Let me take your temperature on this and Temperature rising.

A little learning is a dangerous thing or so it is said. So as a pedant I would first like to point out that temperatures are measured in degree fahrenheit, degree celsius and kelvin noting that the names are started with a lower case letter to avoid confusion with the surnames of the scientists. Also a redefinition of the triple point of water means that the boiling point of water is no longer 373.15 K!And so to a useful “scale” or rather a more practical conversion between celsius (the unit I use in my capacity as a teacher) and fahrenheit (my preferred unit in relation to the weather). I claim no originality for this rather state what I heard and then make a further observation. Instead of playing around with ±32 and 5/9 or 9/5 a reasonably accurate, and hence perfectly acceptable, formula is “take thirty from the fahrenheit temperature and divide the answer by two” as shown in the table below:

Perfectly adequate (±1° most of the time) for those of us who live in England. Our friends in hotter or cooler climates might consider whether a tweak to the constant “thirty” is worth it.

The other day, while walking down the street, I heard somebody say to their companion, “Sometimes I don’t want to spend an evening out with my colleagues. Sometimes, I’d rather be in my pyjamas.”

I was close enough to have said to him, “Why can’t you do both?”.

But I didn’t.

Two men walking on a bridge in Rome:

Man 1: The fortification here is quite immense. There are loads of cannons up there but you can’t see them because there is a statue in the way.

Man 2: Look at that statue over there.

Man 1: Yeah, that one’s a lady.

Tonight, while crossing London Bridge, I saw Jeremy Paxman wandering around. He looked quite disheveled (for him, I mean, he didn’t have a tie on for a start) and he was wandering about from left to right across the pavement. When he quickly walked back towards the edge I really did think “he’s going to jump!”.

Because he’s famous, I didn’t approach him immediately. I was always brought up to believe that celebrities have the strength of ten to fifteen men. So I looked around for help and that’s when I saw the film crew. Of course, if you were a celebrity and going to kill yourself you would definitely bring a film crew along. That’s just common sense.

So I left them to their own devices. I would have taken a picture but I didn’t want to risk Paxman threatening to overrule me.

I was at a bar not that long ago and I decided, in the term of one of my less couth* friends, to syphon the python.

The toilet, as I believe the title of this post**** may have given away, had three urinals in it. But it was the configuration of them that was most interesting to me.

First, you must know that there was only one cubicle in the room.

Second, you should know that if one were to stand in front of the first urinal, one would block the entrance to the cubicle. So that urinal was out. As was the cubicle.

The middle urinal was out because it was the middle urinal. That is the law, passed down from ancient times. ‘No man shall stand at the middle urinal if all urinals are available.’

Last, but not least, the last urinal was wedged in behind the sink so that if you wanted to use it, you had to stand with your backside wedged against the taps.

So my question is this – what would you have done?

* You can be ‘uncouth’, but ‘couth’ itself – what is that?**

** This and other opposite words that don’t exist are discussed in my new book “things that should be true but are the opposite of true”.***

*** Since the publication of my book, the word “false” has been brought to my attention. This alters almost nothing.

**** “It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.” – The Red Headed League*****

***** “I do not take 50 minutes to go to the toilet. That is not what I am implying.

So I went to the theatre the other night. During the interval I found myself finishing my glass of wine while Katherine popped to the loo.

I cast my eyes around looking for something to entertain them. And lo, Michael Howard oiled into view. I did the look away, look back, look away, look back thing that we all think we can get away with but know doesn’t really work.

Having decided that it was him, I decided that the best thing I could do was completely ignore him. I did this successfully and turned back to the cheeky rioja.

Glass finished, I then wandered off to get rid of the plastic receptacle*. The problem is, of course, that I had forgotten about Michael Howard a bit too much. I realized that I was, essentially, sidling up to him. But of course I was still looking down in case there had been a spare ledge for my empty placky plonk-holder.

I looked up and realised that I’d actually got within a few feet of him. And then as he raised the various bits of cheek around his mouth in what I’m sure he’s been reassured resembles a smile – a smile learned from a book – I realized that he thought I was approaching him.

Oh. No.

What do I do? Should I say something? Should I ask him if he really did threaten to overrule Derek Lewis? I nearly did. I really did. But then I thought, no, it’s an old joke. He’s probably heard it quite a few times. So instead I simply turned around and walked off towards some likely looking ledges.

I wonder what he thought. Maybe he’ll leave a comment?

* We clearly need a better name than “plastic glass” for plastic glasses. Any suggestions?

Yes of course you do. You’ve all waited patiently for the next instalment.

But at any rate here’s something that I saw on holiday which I couldn’t help laughing at (perhaps a bit too much).