THE letters from Mrs P Horne (January 11) and Mr R Osborne (January 16) more than rang a bell, they brought back memories of a nightmare.

I decided to upgrade from BT dial up to BT broadband. I followed the instructions supplied with the disk and my PC refused to work. BT had wiped all the configuration files from my Windows operating system. When I phoned BT customer services in India, I believe I set the world record for the longest telephone call to a British firm's call centre.

York to India, then transferred back to the UK, the call was then transferred back to India where due to the accent I could not understand the person on the other end.

I asked for a supervisor, the call was transferred back to the UK. This was then transferred to someone in India, who could not understand the problem and transferred me to a person in Ireland, who said I was very faint and hung up.

Not surprising really, because we had been around the world two and a half times.

Sadly this is not the end. After many hours on the phone and threatening legal action against senior BT board members, I received a UK complaints number who agreed to cancel the contract and pay compensation for my wasted time.

I was, however, transferred to someone in India, who did not cancel the contract but upgraded me to a dial-up service I did not want or request.

Because BT charges three months in advance via the phone bill, I effectively gave them a £60 interest-free loan for three months before I got my money back.

Is this the extreme of incompetence or can it be beaten?

Mal Goodwin,

Moorgarth Avenue, York.

Updated: 09:41 Wednesday, January 25, 2006