Stressed Brits

Found the following article at Hot Air

British people crumple under stressful modern life

One in 10 people describes themselves as constantly at boiling point while a fifth start feeling stressed before breakfast....Just over half of the population struggles to sleep at night, while one in two has headaches or migraines, 23% have digestive problems and 17% suffer panic attacks. Two thirds of people admit they now regularly feel at the end of their tether and unable to cope, and 12% said they constantly feel at boiling point. Almost half, 42%, said they spend at least an eighth of the day feeling stressed out and on average, people are anxious for more than two hours a day....The overwhelming majority of people - 71% - believe living in the UK is more stressful than living abroad and 85% believe life is harder now than it was 50 years ago.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure I know why. Allow me to share with you this lovely experience I had this morning:

I got up early because I had been assigned by Royal before he left to cancel some of our bills for our house in the U.K.  Today I decided I'd better get to it so I'll have something to report when he calls.  I chose our Tiscali internet account because I thought that would be fairly simple.  Ha.
 
I call the first phone number and spend 2-3 minutes going through the 'touch one now' menus and finally get to 'touch 3 to cancel your Tiscali account'.  The next thing I know the annoying recorded voice is spitting out numbers saying to call them to cancel.  What the hell had I been doing?  Fine.  I have to wait until she says it again because even though I had a pen and paper in front of me like a good customer speaking to a representative, I was not prepared to write down a damn number right then. 

I call the second number (trying to get extra cash outta me or what) and go through another 'touch one' process until finally I get to 'touch 3 to speak to us about cancelling your Tiscali account'.  Do I want to speak about it, no, I already know what I want and no one is talking me out of it. 

I am on hold for about 9 minutes.  Long distance.  To Britain.  Just as I'm about to hang up, a very nice Indian gentleman answers.  I gave him my phone number and our address.  He asks me,

"Is Mr. Darcy available?"
"No, but I'm his wife."

Well of course either Royal forgot to add my name to the account or the Tiscali bunch screwed it up, which I wouldn't put past them.  Okay fine, I can handle that.
 
"Can I just ask what will happen to cancel the account then?" 
[This may seem silly, like why couldn't you ask a question?  HA AGAIN.  I was the one to set up our Sky Tv account while Royal was deployed earlier this year, and they would not LET me add Royal to the account as well.  When Royal called to ask how we would go about cancelling our Sky, they wouldn't even answer his question!  So this is why I asked if I could ask.]
But this guy was nice and said the following in response

"It depends on why you are cancelling."
Uh okay.  Really doesn't matter I just want it cancelled.  And I'm a free consumer...
"We are moving out of the country."
"First we will need you to send our Home Office a copy of your one-way ticket.  Then upon receiving this they will send you a receipt which will require the signature of the account holder.  This will need to be sent back to our Home Office.  Then your account will be listed as 'cancellation pending'.  Blah blah blah more stuff."

I just laughed to myself because in my experience (and I had several fun ones while I was there) this is how things work in Britain. 
So when my husband gets back from serving his country with honor, he will be calling Mr. Tiscali and telling them we are cancelling because
WE WERE UNSATISFIED WITH YOUR DAMN SERVICE!! 
Do you need to see any paperwork for that buddy??  Do ya??  (except they probably do...)

This is why the Brits are stressed out of their minds.  In my humble opinion. 

Comments

[Goalie]

You need PROOF THAT YOU'RE LEAVING THE COUNTRY to cancel your INTERNET service? That's really what it was all those years ago--not a "freedom of religion" thing, but a "freedom of internet providers" issue.

And, again, thanks for your comment. I still get teary when I think about that kid.

[Pat or Pi]

I do fully sympathise. I have just had a run in with Amazon about a book I ordered in March and which - just when it is finally due - they find the credit card doesn't work. Hello it was renewed in August. Long story short grovelling apologies from them and postage waived whilst my BP has risen ten notches.

I'm moving to Texas!

[Kath]

I'm hopin' that if we just use a different reason for leaving they won't need to hear from us again! We'll see. I just thought, sigh "oh for the love of Pete!"
You would be very much welcome in Texas, I assure you! Even just for a visit :o)