Do I speak some strange form of English intelligible only to me? Well, on occasion I probably do, but I think I’m pretty good at making myself clear most of the time, aren’t I? The reason I’m asking is because either I’m not one of life’s natural communicators, or the people at T-Mobile don’t read my emails. And why am I emailing the people at T-Mobile? That’s a rather sorry tale.

For a while now my mobile has been troublesome. It was only cheap when I bought it, and has been dropped several times, so it was only to be expected that it wouldn’t be very long lived. Last week (on the 29th June), it completely died and no amount of charging, shaking or pleading could bring it back to life.

So, I looked for a replacement. A search of Amazon turned up one I liked and, with the clarity of hindsight, I should have bought that one there and then, but I didn’t. Instead, I did a quick search of Google to find out more about the phone, and discovered the same model was cheaper direct from T-Mobile. The dead phone was with T-Mobile, and they seemed ok – apart from a weird habit of blocking social networks and making you phone up to ask for permission to use them. (Please T-Mobile person, let me use Twitter, I promise not to post photos of my bum). So, I ordered the phone from them, naively expecting it to arrive within a day or two – I could manage for a day or two.

A day or two went by with no sign of the phone. Then another day or two, and another. Finally, yesterday, I’d had enough of waiting, so I emailed them to cancel the order. Today, I got an email back from them saying they were processing my order, I just needed to phone them to provide more information about myself. WTF!

They already have my name, my address, my bank details, and if I’m remembering correctly – it was so long ago – my date of birth. How much much more could they possibly need to know?! Even better, the number they provided was not a freephone one, so I’d have been calling them at my own expense. And which bit of ‘I want to cancel this order’ did they not understand? Is that an ambiguous statement? I didn’t think so, but then I’m the silly sod who didn’t buy from Amazon because she thought she had got a better deal elsewhere, so what do I know.

I’ve emailed them back – using fairly simple words in the hope that this time they will understand what I’m saying to them – and repeated my wish to cancel the order and explained that I feel a nine day wait for an item I could buy off the shelf in a supermarket is somewhat extreme. Am I wrong in thinking that?

Anyhoo, it’s now 8th July. I still don’t have a phone. I am about to buy one – yes, from Amazon.

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