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I think it was love at first sight for me and Battersea Power Station. My first encounter, while catching a cab across town, literally made me sit up and exclaim: “what on earth is that?” There are a lot of beautiful buildings in this city and to be sure this is not one of classical beauty … but oh yes it is! The expression “a face only a mother could love” comes to mind, but I swear I could not look away.
And up until today Battersea Power Station was something that I only ever saw fleetingly – glimpses while running across Vauxhall bridge or on the train from Victoria to Clapham Junction. So today I indulged in a good half hour perve session from the safety of the Pimlico side of the river. The imposing Art Deco architecture, the dirty gritty iron rigs that scream working class London of old…just fantastic!
So, stage 2 of my somewhat stalker-ish love affair with the station was my fav resource Wikipedia. Here is a sample of what I leaned:
- It is the largest brick building in Europe
- It was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott who also designed London’s red telephone box (well, I am this guy’s too – see previous post on ‘Red’ London) and later another power station on Bankside (now the Tate Modern of course!)
- It is quite the celebrity, featuring in lots of TV shows and movies, and was on the cover of Pink Floyds album Animals.
- No-one knows what the hell to do with it!
In the mean time I’m just happy to watch from afar.
At wits end. With BT. They are horrendous. Horrible. Evil. Bane of my existence. Can’t speak for anger. Force me to talk in incomplete sentences. GRRRRRrrrrrrrr…..
Where to start? We had BT phone, internet and TV at our old flat and had been quite happy with the service. Organised and internet dependant us had arranged for BT man to come by the day after we moved in to set up new service in our new flat. Plan executed flawlessly, everything up and running immediately.
I would have thought the story should end here, but that was before I discovered the real BT. Not the public British Telecom I see on advertisements, the real guys dealing with customers – the Boneless Thugs.
A few weeks later I came home to discover that none of my services were working. Strange, I thought. I’d better call BT! 45 minutes of waiting on hold later, I was told by that my service had been cancelled for unknown reasons. This was my first taste of what was to be 2 months of absolute incompetence, mismanagement and the WORST customer service in the world. I’m not sure how the CEO at BT can sleep at night.
After this unexpected cancellation, I had to reorder all services. I lodged a complaint – no call back. I waited a few weeks for services to start. Only to discover they had started them up again at our old address (EEEDJITS!) Lodge another complaint – receive a voicemail 1 week later with no return number and no call back. Try to reorder again but now our account/phone number has changed so much they don’t know who we are. Plus complaint outstanding no one can place any orders until this is resolved. Finally place phone and internet order in (complaint not resolved) – wait a few weeks then receive delay notification. Now finally have phone and internet 2 MONTHS LATER. Complaint NEVER FOLLOWED UP. STILL NO TV. THEY ARE EEEDJITS. FUMING, BOILING OVER ANGER FROM ME. I KNOW I’M OVERUSING CAPS BUT THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE!
Each of the several dozens of calls made by me to BT involved wait times of roughly 45 minutes. Many calls disconnected half way through. Thousands of transfers. Many promised call backs which never came. Many sympathetic but unable to help – often this is more infuriating.
In the words of Derryn Hinch “Shame Shame Shame”. BT, you suck.
PS I really wanted to make a YouTube video for this complaint but I’m not clever enough. Send this to everyone you know. And if someone wants to write a song and post on YouTube PLEASE DO
Remember when I said my jogging route in London was so good I could sell it? Well turns out somebody already is: just saw this site selling Jogging Tours of London www.cityjoggingtours.co.uk; I guess I’m slightly behind the eight ball on this one.
louashton
