Please hold the line as your call is important to us....

The BT 'Technical Helpline' is an oxymoron - it's a telephone service that provides neither help nor technical assistance. Perhaps it's just incorrectly named - maybe it should just be called shite.

I spent over 4 hours of my life on hold yesterday - 'your position in the queue has been maintained and you will be answered by the next available operator', or being transfered to yet another department somewhere in Mumbai that couldn't assist me - 'I will transfer you to a department that specialises in Broadband talk'. As I begged the man not to put the telephone down I was swiftly (15 minutes 28 seconds) patched through to a technician in Birmingham.

Just as I was about to hurl my BT Hub through the window I realised that this person seemed to know what to do - if only I was put through to him in the first place. Oh what I could have done in those 4 hours, 42 seconds.....