Jabberwocky Slain! A Christmas Heartwarmer!

YES, in ONE communication, I just recently made a major phone company back down and cancel a contract. AFTER the ‘˜cooling off period’! If any of you are familiar with this sort of thing, you will know that once signed, a mobile phone contract is like selling your soul and signing in blood with the devil. Actually, you get a shiny new piece of very expensive kit given to you on a promise and with Voda, I have been looked after, even when I have made a royal fuss.
But ‘˜mis-sold’ is one monstrous term in retail and in mobile phone contracts, this is one challenging thing to prove. However, my lifelong chum, Julie-Anne, the single most well-travelled person I know, has this neighbour. We’ll call her June.
Tuesday nights are her night and they spend the evening together and JA does all sorts of stuff to help her as well as be her friend. She is a senior lady in a 21st century world and its one she understands and copes with. Mobile telephony was beyond my dad’s practical use, never on, never charged etc. But June was good with her old mobile, especially liking that she could be sent messages by text that just show up.
Trouble is, as a globe trotting snapper, Julie-Anne is away a lot and June went to get ‘˜a phone to get texts on’ in town Now, instead of a Doro SimplePhone, or one of a number of big button simply-laid out ‘˜seniors’ type mobiles, she went into an EE shop and met a super-salesman.
Some time later, she came home, with an EE flagship tablet on a 24 month contract. The single peak money maker sale an EE Phoneshop salesperson can make. JA worked out it’d have bought you a premium fruit-based tablet for the same outlay as this thing.
June couldn’t even turn it on. Learning difficulties are one thing but simply being shown an ‘˜on’ button, or in MY OWN case that you bloody SWIPE a damn Samdung to answer it, meant I stabbed and missed my first few calls on my S4 this time last year, when I too started a contract. I thought the over-busy chevrons on the screen were a ‘˜graphic’. And I am a reviewer. Poor June was screwed.
Julie-Anne comes home, finds out it has happened and that the cooling off period was long gone. She finds June cannot even turn it on, nor has she and JA quietly goes what I call Full Boodicca. She calls me. Of course, I try the manager of the shop first, as is correct procedure to give them the opportunity to be nice, which frankly was me just making noises with my face so I could hear the answer I knew they would give me. I digest this information and do a brief Google search and make two calls, all sweetness and light, I go for the soft underbelly.
For those who do not know, newspaper people NEED your stuff. Knowing who to call at papers is SIMPLE. They print it inside and they all actually answer the phone. What you say, determines their actions and anyone even you, can do this. All I know is a few more passive aggressive techniques, then a vile one. For I do have pen that can be mightier than a sword and in defence of a put upon little old lady who finds the world a bit rapid, I will tilt at windmills and spit in Dragon’s eyes. Yes, I will even go for the big one the Jabberwocky.
Everything Everywhere. As advertised by Mr. Bacon.
To quote Lewis Carroll: ‘One, two! One, two! And through and through. The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head, He went galumphing back.
And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to My Arms, my beamish boy! Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy!’
So what is the underbelly? It is corporate Public Relations. I looked and found Nelson Bostockbig shiny and cool. Their clients EE are a biggie and they will be dealing with top people in marketing at EE as their PR folks. Customer Service department? PAH!
Now, if you really are bored enough to have followed my drivel this far, prepare to marvel at the sheer depth of the anger and shamelessness of my references to get my result. THIS is the e-mail some poor soul at a West End PR agency had to handle. He found so white hot and scary, it was inserted into management at EE with great force about ten minutes after it was read:

‘Dear ******,
Many thanks for your time just now and apologies for the peremptory ending of the first call (which came via the EE head office switchboard)…
It was the Beeb. As I do get to do bits of ‘punditry’ for the BBC. Sadly, they don’t pay for local radio – this is BBC Radio West Midlands today at 5:25pm – you can listen here BBC If you wish!
It’s about how many Range Rover Evoques are being stolen in London these days. You don’t get paid for local but do for Radio 2, Scotland and Wales…and it has lead to the sofa in Salford for BBC 1 Breakfast more than once. Hell of a drive…point is, I can call Jeremy Vine up. I even Google better than the actor of the same name as me.
I am the son of the late Claire Rayner OBE. My brother Jay does a bit of telly, too.
To come to the point, a thrusting young executive sell-anything-to-anyone type at the EE store at ********************, recently sold a tablet called an Eagle (I think) to a little old lady, aged 74, who happens to have learning difficulties and just came in for a phone ‘to get texts on’.
She cannot even turn it on and has signed a two year contract.
My childhood friend Julie Anne, is her neighbour. Her name is JUNE (surname supplied). Julie spends much of her time abroad as an international photographer and was away when June did this. Julie helps her with all sorts of things and called to tell me about this, once she had learned what had happened.
Sadly, the manager at the shop, whose voice is easy to recognise (I am primarily a car AUDIO reviewer, hence the involvement with phones for music – they call me the Jeremy Clarkson of car electronics) has an ugly stripe of smugness right through her and treated the approach to the shop in a way so far off brand message, it was like a piece of the damn PHONESHOP programme. I did call the shop as well – and well, got hung up on as soon as the subject was raised.
For me, that’s like calling Marty McFly ‘chicken’ and kinda guarantees personal urge as well, sadly. I am nothing if not honest.
I know there is a due complaints process but this just stinks and is a 24 Carat social media vertical take off job, were it to get publicised right.
Now, do try this:
Go to my website of the same name as the email but .co.uk, (no link to fret about) pick a reviewed item and Google it. then see how 1.4 million pages and 140,000 hardcore mobile audio and electronics geeks a month, sticks out like a candle in a cave. Google cannot tell between MY work and that seething forum. so I ‘Google like a beast.’ I have extensive Facebook page reach as well.
I admit emotional involvement as my mum HATED the weaker being trodden on and I inherit. And this is a dear friend’s vulnerable neighbour.
I heartily recommend and urge a delightful, sweet, POSITIVE and ‘up’ solution to this one, which is to admit a simple miss-selling and to allow the device to be returned, that contract revoked AND to get the simple phone-for-texts supplied that June came in for in the first place.
Although she really needs one of the newest super-simple pensioner phones with a few big buttons and labelled direct-dial to loved ones buttons too. I don’t know if such phones are available outside of newspaper advertising.
Anyway, I invite the sensible top-end folks at Nelson Bostock to spot the lovely positive that can be had for their client in this and to recognise just how keen I am to set fire to this story.
I have to look my mum’s ghost in the eye, after all.
Yours very sincerely,
Adam Rayner’

Ain’t I a brute?
They didn’t answer. It was treated like a hot coal.
Top EE management answered instead – and cancelled the contract, sent packaging to return the tablet and refunded the £49.99 up front fee.
‘..and with his head, he went galumphing back’
Above, June outside the shop who wouldn’t take it back.
And as for the salesperson? They are now manager of their own branch and they don’t know me from Adam. So I am going after him on camera, soon.