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All Irene Clarke was trying to do was notify BT that her partner had died and to transfer the couple's account into her name. Dauntlessly, she did battle with BT's infamous automated answer system, which is designed to swirl customers around a digital maze until they subside. Forty-five minutes of this earned her a call centre operative on the Indian subcontinent. Clarke explained her sad circumstances and requested that all future bills be addressed to her. The operative confirmed that she was a "known entity" on the account and agreed to amend the records.
Shortly afterwards Clarke discovered that her phone line was dead. Sleuthing from a neighbour's house revealed that BT had terminated her account and allocated her a new number, which would become active at some unspecified time in the future. Within the hour Clarke's broadband connection also ceased and her service provider told her it would cost £40 and take seven to 10 days to reconnect her. An afternoon of frantic calls from the obliging neighbour's phone re-established her phone line, but with a different number. "I was halfway through making all the contacts necessary for arranging my partner's funeral and I was cut off from the world," says Clarke. "That phone number is my life line."
BT did eventually restore the old number, but not before sending a letter and two bills to Clarke's late partner, asking him to act as his own executor and assuring him that it wanted to make things "as easy as possible at this difficult time". However, the company insisted it could only afford £40 goodwill for the trauma, a gesture Clarke dimissed as insulting. The press office is made of softer tissue and, admitting that Clarke was a victim of "incorrect procedures", scrapes together £200. And when BT hears the sum is going to charity it soars to £500 plus a bouquet of flowers.
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