First of all there is the letter.

My sister had a very unsatisfactory phone conversation with Virgin Media’s customer services when she was trying to get Dad’s telephone and cable TV cancelled after he died. In a fit of pique she wrote a 5-page explaining exactly what the circumstances were, why the customer couldn’t give the instruction himself due to being dead and everything, and (probably) where she was going to stick the cable TV box if they didn’t collect it.

Virgin Media replied by sending a letter to Dad’s house, addressed to him, saying they were sorry to hear he was unhappy with his service and that they would be in touch with him in the next two weeks. Good luck with that! They also promise they will try to solve his problems. Good luck with that too!

And now I find out that the V+ digital recording thingy will not record radio programmes. There is a 30-minute programme about Kraftwerk on Radio 4 on Thursday morning. I tried to set the V+ to record it, but it says you can only record TV. What a silly restriction, although possibly not Virgin’s fault – it may be some copyright issue.

Then I remembered that I am not at work on Thursday so I can listen to it anyway. But thats not the point.

Still, they did send me a very tempting offer about mobile phones the other day. A snazzy handset for free and 100 mins of talk and 100 texts a month for a tenner and unused minutes and texts can be carried forward. I might be tempted if it was possible to get a reliable signal on the Virgin network in Crawley. In our house they only work in one very specific spot in the kitchen and even then its a bad signal.

I can’t see that problem going away when every attempt to put up a new mast is met with protests.