As I mentioned back in April, I decided to fire O2 when my contract was up since they offered literally no incentive to stay with them despite having been a perfect loyal customer for 18 months. Oh, how I wish I could undo what I did.

When I got my first mobile phone in the late 90s, I went with Orange, and found them to be fine. I had literally no complaints, until I moved to London, where I suddenly found that approaching half the time I would be unable to make a call because their network was busy. So I chucked them and moved to T-Mobile, which had no such problems and also had the advantage of offering me half-price line rental since I had a mate who worked there and he put me on their Friends & Family scheme. This was nifty for a good few years, and the only gripe I ever had with T-Mobile was their laughable range of handsets. Whenever the adverts and magazines trumpeted a new phone or range of features, I knew I wouldn’t be seeing it any time soon since the range of phones available was always a good year behind that of the competitors. Still, no worries really. I had a Sony Ericsson walkman phone something-or-other that did the job and let me listen to music without a separate MP3 player, and that was all good.

Then the iPhone came along. Not being a bleeding-edge-early-adopter (read “credulous git with too much cash”) I did some waiting and seeing, and when the price came down and the handset got good (the 3G), I took the plunge – which at the time (Autumn 2008) meant switching to O2. This I did, and right up until April this year I had not one complaint about them or their service, but so piqued was I that my custom meant so little that I took proper umbrage and left, plumping for Vodafone instead.

Now, instead of getting a bit of a weak signal in the building where I work, I get zero signal pretty much all of the time. If by chance a call does come through, I have to quickly answer it and dash for one of the kitchens, where signal is mysteriously much better. The 3G coverage is laughable (I’ve heard people say this about O2 – trust me, you are in signal heaven compared to being on Vodafone), and I live in fucking London. We’re not talking about the bloody Shetland Isles here. Best of all, when using the maps feature as a route planner while driving (yes, using a cradle attached to the windscreen, not holding it in my hand) it routinely loses connection to the maps service and the Little Blue Line of Ultimate Hope – i.e. the line you must follow to get to your destination – just disappears while driving, usually in the middle of a series of complicated junctions.

I got married in June. Thanks, it was awesome. Previous to that I had my stag do in May. Two of the organisers of this splendid event were coming from overseas, including my best man. When I tried to call him THE DAY BEFORE THE STAG DAY, I was unable to do so, since there was an international calling bar on my new Voda phone. Moderately outraged, I called customer services and asked them WTF, and they said that it would be lifted once I had made three payments. So… no international calls for the first three months of my contract? And you didn’t bother to even fucking tell me this? A month or so later I had occasion to look up some actress or other on google images while I was out and about. I tapped a likely looking result, fully aware that the website I was about to arrive at was very likely what is referred to as NSFW, to arrive at a Vodafone webpage informing me that I wasn’t allowed to look at material of this nature. Vodafone had decided – by default – to shield me from not only the danger of speaking to foreigners but also of seeing ladies with no clothes on. Without telling me.

I have been with all four of the big UK networks now (I don’t really count Three) and never had any of these problems before. Really, none of them. Without a shadow of a doubt, Vodafone are the worst I have encountered. My wife says I should complain – but to what end? I’m under contract until October 2011. Yes, another 13 months of this bollocks. But I have signed a contract, and unless I can prove that they are failing to deliver their end of the bargain, I’m fucked. She says “But they’re not providing the service you signed on for,” and while I agree with her, how would I prove this?

Do any of you have advice or similar stories/experience? Do you know of any other ways out of my contract (I’ll happily give the phone back and go back to O2, cap in hand) other than paying the line rental for the next 13 months?

UK mobile networks in order of preference:

1. O2
2. T-Mobile
3. Orange
4. …dunno, maybe try Three
5. Carrier Pigeon
6. Two cans and a really long string
7. Don’t use one, just become a hermit
8. …
9. Vodafone

–c.

Anyway, today I noticed a really cool thing on The Awesomer – The Blank Wall Clock. A wall clock that has no numbers on it, but a writeable surface and it comes with a dry-wipe pen. Price? $155, or £97.

Fuck that right off, and come back when it’s £40. I might think about buying one then.

–c.

Jesus Christ. This reminds me why I usually shun online delivery services in December. I know if I was to have words with either service in question, or the postal service, I would be told “We are experiencing an unusually high volume of post at this time.” Yes. It’s December, hence Christmas. It happens at the same time every fucking year. You might want to think ahead.

Benders.
–c.

Jesus Crispy Deep-Fried Fucking Christ. GET OVER IT.

–c.

Adding on transfers so you can take it easy between the airport and the resort: £50

Travel insurance (which has some significant exclusions): £20

Finding out, in the middle of packing your bags, 5 hours before the flight that the tour operator has gone into administration and your holiday is cancelled with no hope of reprieve: Speechless.

And the covers band has stalled before it even left the rehearsal room due to lack of being bothered from another quarter, and meh. Whatever. And I am getting fucking sick of this fucking attitude across the board.

So. What am I going to do about it? Bitch and moan? Nothing? Call everyone fuckers and complain about my lot?

Fuck that noise. I am going to take the positives from all this and do something new. Something on my fucking own, that no-one can fuck up for me.

The one positive thing that came out of the JackBarrel covers attempt was that I discovered I can sing lead vocals. Not amazingly, and I’m totally inexperienced at it, but I can do it. So I hereby announce that my next recording project is going to be an album or EP of original vocal rock songs written, played and sung by me.

It will be called “If You Want It Done Right” (or similar) because ultimately I have come to realise that this is the only way anything will get done: I have to fucking do it myself.

So. Bollocks to everyone else (Jon, you’re mainly excused from that as the recent collapses weren’t your fault), I’m going solo. It will probably be under my glam stagename Tommi Starr, and it certainly won’t see light of day until at the very earliest middle of next year, but there it is.

So what do you think about that?
–TS

OIL company executives were last night heading to undisclosed locations amid speculation that consumers were about to make the link between high petrol prices and corporate profits.

I expect they worked really hard to get where they are though. You know, good on ‘em.

…

No, wait… AAARGH. FETCH ME MY NAILED CLUB.

–c.

–c.

I’ve done the menial jobs myself – I’ve been a barman, a factory worker, an ice-cream van driver, a fast-food technician, and a retail assistant. I know these are boring jobs.

But if you have a job to do, bally well do it or give it to someone else. I am sick to the back fucking teeth of people not bothering to quite do the job that is asked of them, and it seems to be a systemic problem at the moment. I shan’t even go into the level of utter shitness that my fiancée has encountered recently in the land of ebay – suffice to say that the concept of “doing what is expected of you”, or even in some cases “doing what you have promised to do”, appears to be a dying blasted notion.

In the U.S. of States, good customer service is not just the norm, it is the absolute minimum. Customers simply will not tolerate anything less, and they will vote in herds with their feet and wallets. Grunting monosyllabically as you push my produce across the counter and gazing over my shoulder as you hold out your paw to receive my payment is NOT BLOODY GOOD ENOUGH. Lying about receiving emails from a buyer and sending the purchased item late and slightly damaged is NOT BLOODY GOOD ENOUGH. Answering a support call to a call centre as if it’s a personal affront on your spare time is NOT BLOODY GOOD ENOUGH. Oh, and acting all wounded and hurt when your shitness is pointed out and your name is taken is also not bloody good enough, since you ask.

Shape the fuck up, Britain.
–c.

Is there an off switch to online?
–c.