Googlewacker and America crosser Dave Gorman has being trying to sort his broadband out this week — he’s written up two accounts of his dealings with BT tech support:

I kept hearing the following phrase:
“Your case has been escalated to the complex faults team but due to a system error the task has failed.”

I kept asking the helpdesk staff to explain what this ridiculous sentence meant. On every single occasion, they just repeated the phrase as if repeated listening would make its meaning transparent. Then, when locked in a two-hour conversation with one of them and having long reached a state of tetherlessness I started trying to break it down.
“What is the system? What is the error? What is the task and how has it failed?” I asked.
“Due to a system error the task has failed.”
“Yes. But I don’t know what that means. I need you to explain the words to me. What task has failed?”

Guess what? What it meant was: we’ve sent a message to the engineers but due to a cock up, the message hasn’t got through.

It goes on…

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