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I really hate the BT family. I hate the fact that they are so damned pleased with themselves, even though they clearly have nothing to be pleased with themselves about. In different commercials over the years we have learnt that the kooky girl met the idiot boy after divorcing her first husband, the father of her children. They all grimace and gurn at each other when he’s on the end of the phone, probably just trying to get some access to his kids. The boyfriend moves into her large, luxurious house, which is presumably still being paid for by the poor sod she’s divorced, and attempts to forge a relationship with the children, who spend shamefully few commercials shunning their mother’s new squeeze but quickly allow themselves to be won over by him when he helps them with their homework using BT’s splendid range of internet services. They were easily bought, weren’t they?
We are supposed to grow fond of this family because, we are subliminally instructed, this is how life is. Well, it’s not how my life is. Or how I would want it to be.
If I ever accumulate five kids with a man I then decide is too creepy to have a phone conversation with, please remind me not to set up home with a stupid bloke in his 20s who can’t even deliver a speech at his best mate’s wedding without causing a rumpus.
But the real reason I hate the BT family, as I’ve said, is that they lie. The advert where the ruffled idiot has a BT ‘home hub’ installed and starts emailing people from his laptop to tell them he’s got kooky mum pregnant again, or some such piece of good news, using the effortlessly accessible wireless service that is now beaming internet around the house had me well and truly hoodwinked.
The other week, while wrestling with my internet connection, I put aside my prejudice against the BT family and ordered one of these ‘home hub’ things.
The people at the call centre assured me I wouldn’t need help installing it, so I didn’t order the engineer at £45. But when the box came it was so utterly unfathomable I rang back and said I would need one after all. ‘That’ll be £80,’ came the reply. Turns out, if you don’t take up the offer of an engineer at the point of ordering, the price of one doubles, even if you ring back the next day. But that was only the beginning of the deception. I managed to get an engineer round for £45, after hours of arguing, and he installed the hub in my office, and at first glance it did look like the one the idiot boy manages to use in the advert. Until I turned on my laptop in the kitchen and tried to connect to the internet. No wireless. Turns out the signal strength of BT wireless is so weak I can’t even get it ten yards away from where the ‘hub’ is installed. Which makes it absolutely useless.
If you look carefully at the advert, the idiot boy uses his laptop right next to the hub. So there is officially no misrepresentation. Very clever.
I rang the helpline and was driven half- demented by a clamour of lightning fast Indian voices calling me ‘ma’am’. ‘What is the problem please, ma’am?’ My wireless doesn’t work. ‘Thank you, ma’am, and what is it about your wireless that isn’t working, ma’am?’ The wireless bit. ‘Thank you, ma’am, and now, ma’am, I will ask you a series of questions about your wireless, ma’am…’ The idiot boy doesn’t have to hold the line for two hours and argue with the people in New Delhi, does he? I’d like to see an advert where he has to cancel a whole day’s kooky, modern-family activities to do battle with people called ‘Isshit’. I kid you not. That’s what the call-centre guy said his name was. Or maybe he was trying to tell me something.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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