Normal service will resume... sometime?

Any form of blog posting has been pretty much impossible for the past week, which is a shame because I had lots of lovely things to write about, including more on the Ben Folds concert, and the fact that I'm interviewing Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (please don't call them The Clap) tomorrow, and our wonderfully relaxing but gluttonous girlie long weekend in London. But alas and alack, my marvellous phone/internet/TV provider decided to once again cut us off last Thursday, so a) no blogging and b) my first blog post in over a week is going to be a bilious rant about how unbelievably unhelpful and illogical and completely all over the place they are. I'm just off the phone with them, and to paraphrase:

Me: "Hi, I've been cut off, can you tell me why?"
Crappy Cable Company (CCC): "What's your address again?" (even though I'd already given it)
Me: "Okay, it's blahblahstraat blahblahnumber"
CCC: "Oh, it looks like we accidentally moved your service next door, sorry about that"
Me: "Er... okay..."
CCC: "We'll reconnect you asap at no charge"
Me: "Er... thanks?"
CCC: "No problem, Mrs. Javanowitz" (or a name to that effect, but NOT MINE!)
Me: "Eh? I am not Mrs. Javanowitz"
CCC: "Er... can you give me your full name and address before you moved?"
Me: "Sure... blahblah, blahblahstraat"
CCC: "Oh... per our records we never moved your products and there's a note on your file saying that we couldn't because there was a problem with the signal"
Me: "?!?!?!?! I've been able to use all three bits of the service since I moved!"
CCC: "Er... okay... we're not sure how that could have happened... oh and you owe us 71 euro"
Me: "I didn't receive a bill"
CCC: "Okay, but you have to pay it before we can reconnect you"
Me: "Fine, as long as you can guarantee you can reconnect me"
CCC: "We'll keep you posted, what's your mobile number?"
Me: "06-blahblah. Thank you, bye bye now"

Bad enough on its own, but thirty seconds after hanging up I had a head-meet-desk moment upon realising that I didn't have the payment code for the bill (duh, because I never got the bill). So I wearily phoned up again:

CCC: "At this time we can only handle general queries as our systems are down"
Me: "Well how long will they take to fix?!"
CCC: "About three hours"
Me: "What time do you close?"
CCC: "7pm"
Me: ".................."

At this rate it's going to be at least another five or six days at this stage before I'm reconnected. And maybe five or six gins (or half an hour with a punchbag, I can't decide which) before I've calmed down.