We're British...and therefore *excellent* whiners...not complainers you understand, no that's a title reserved for Americans ;) ...but whiners, as in people who complain incessantly about something yet never complain to anyone who'll do anything about it or do anything yourself to change what you're whining about...it's part of our inherent national identity...it's who we are...it's what we are...and fuck me are we good at it!

But as much as we complain, sorry *whine*, about things have you ever noticed that if you do make a change the thing you change to, more often than not, redefines shitness in such a way that the thing you used to whine about becomes a wonderful paragon of virtue! Let's have a look at one or two instances I can think of before we move on to what's inspired this little diatribe shall we?

The Rail Service...I remember before the railways were privatised when everyone used to moan about British Rail, how crap it was, how many delays there were, how no-one could possibly do a worse job...oh how wrong we were! Along came privatisation, greedy corporations entered the fray and ushered us into a new era of woeful service of gargantuan proportions!

British Telecom...I can remember everyone bitching about prices, moaning about disconnections, harping on about poor customer service...then along came NTL to show BT how to *really* abuse your customers...comparitively BT are an absolute beacon of shining, heavenly, customer service perfection...which they're clearly not, but that serves to illustrate the utter awfulness of NTL appropriately I feel ;)

And now onto the reason for today's post...you see I used to have my mobile phone contract with Vodafone who, as far as I was concerned were fairly shit...not terrible you understand, but certainly not great either...they charged a lot, didn't offer any cool handsets (a point which actually turned me away from them...why yes I am shallow, however did you guess?), customer services were often a nightmare, their website was a confusing shambles and the reception on my phone often dropped out altogether...so...I decided to change to 3...you can probably see where this is going already eh ;)...now the 2 reasons I changed to 3 were 1: Groovy handset. 2: Very cheap. However since joining 3 I have picked up on a few 'niggles' that make Vodafone look positively saintly...sure they don't charge much for the voice minutes (although perhaps that's because you don't really get to use them because there's never any reception...more on that later though!) but they *do* charge a lot for texts...which they neglect to mention, so I go online to see if I can change my tariff at all to find that no, I can't, I can have either loads of voice minutes or loads of texts but not both...fucking cunts thinks I!...then I see an offer where you *can* add a load of texts, so I decide to see if I can do this online...nope, their site manages to be marginally confusing and completely useless for anything other than seeing what you already know...any contact numbers? emails? nope, nary a one...so i decide to call the 'special' number from my handset to talk to someone...oh but i've got no signal! so I can't!...wait for signal...wait longer...continue waiting...wait...wait...wait...wait...there! nope, false alarm...wait...wait...wait...*shock* i've got a signal!...call number...go through intensely irritating callcentre maze...get stuck on hold for aaaaaages and then, just as the 'customer services specialist' answers the call...the signal drops out and you're disconnected!...FUCK!...and how long did it take me to get through to them? 9 days!...9 days of trying this rigmarole *every* day...numerous times...and when I did get through the connection was so bad that I couldn't actually tell what the fuck they were saying half the time so, whilst I was considering complaining properly, I actually couldn't because I knew that at any moment i'd be cut off anyway!...hhhhmmmmmmm is this 3's secret master plan I wonder? make the service *so* unstable and make contacting anyone *such* a nightmare that no-one will be arsed to actually complain!

*sigh* if only Vodafone's handsets weren't so shit :D