6 September 2005: Resolution

A number of correspondents (two is a number, right?) ask what happened about Bulldog.

All very strange, as it happens. After the final call to their various support desks, who as usual promised the problem would be resolved and I'd receive a phone call within forty-eight hours, I gave them three days rather than the standard two before deciding enough was enough. However, due to younger sister's wedding in Devon, I didn't have time to call and cancel that Friday morning before jumping in the car with Gloria and Martyn and heading off down to the cream country. Do it after the weekend, I thought.

So I was surprised when Rob called later that day with a message saying "I assume you called BT because our phone is now working properly." I hadn't called BT. Bulldog had fixed it. Without calling me, of course, but they had fixed it. Or the faeries had got into the exchange and fixed it, which frankly seems just as likely.

So what to do? My desire is to leave Bulldog because of their poor service, but we'd have the hassle of returning to BT and paying signing-on fees to join Force9 or whoever for broadband, which would be the same price as we're paying Bulldog. We still have cheap Bulldog for another few months before we start paying the full price (albeit reduced because we can't get over 1.2Mbps on the broadband), so we'll leave it until Christmas and then see. Meantime they seem as reliable as Pipex (which is to say: not very, but certainly no worse) and, swallowing pride, we're staying with them. At least until they screw up again.

Last week we got the most apologetic grovelling letter I've ever seen on letter-head paper, as Bulldog promised they'd make things better in the coming months at least five times in as many paragraphs. Sweet of them, but I'd have preferred one saying "sorry for screwing you around and lying to you on at least five occasions, we'll give you another month for free."

Maybe I should call them...