Sky. What do you want to watch?

Well, tough, because there's no chance they'll actually fit a dish with which you can receive these programmes. What's more, when you call to ask why they haven't turned up for the third week in a row, you'll be placed on hold, the same as every other time, and forced to listen to an advert for all the wonderful programmes that Sky are currently showing.

Yes, it's true, the Sky guy didn't turn up on Saturday.

I first phoned them just after 10 to find out why there was no sign. At that point, I was told that their engineering people would call me back very soon. They had been given my mobile number, which the customer services bod read out... and which was the same wrong number I had corrected two weeks ago. Anyway, that explains why they didn't call last week.

So, I told the person that the number was wrong, and read out the correct number. Which he didn't get. I tried again. This time, he went for a wholly different wrong number. On the third attempt, he got it. At which point I hung up, working on the assumption that things had been corrected, and the engineers would be calling very soon.

(As an aside, I've heard a lot of people complaining about Indian call centres. However, I can now confirm that Scotland-based centres are no better. Sure, you can understand their accents, and they yours, but that doesn't help even slightly when they can't even take down a phone number correctly. It wasn't as though I was speaking fast - I used the same "slow and clear" voice I use with all call centre people. It really doesn't seem to help.)

An hour and a half passed, after which I called again, and spoke to a different person. (You never get the same person twice. This may be so you feel bad about shouting at the person on the phone, since it's not actually their fault their colleagues are useless.) Anyway, I explained the situation, and she checked the records. And found that the second person I spoke to last week, the one who I made faithfully promise that the engineer would actually turn up, had put a note on my account that it was vitally important that the engineer turn up, but hadn't actually gone so far as to book an engineer to come out and do the job. It's a good thing my window was closed at that point, or else I might have engaged in an autodefenestration.

So, the litany of woe continues. They have booked in an engineer for next week, hopefully one who will actually exist, as opposed to the crazy virtual engineers who I've had thus far. They're refunding the money I had to pay to have my account relocated, and also the last month's viewing fees.

Oh, one more wrinkle: the first person who I spoke to, after finally getting the right mobile phone number from me, proceeded to not enter it into their computer. I had to correct the data again in my second call.

The morals of this story are two-fold: firstly, always make sure your windows are closed before calling a "Customer Support" hotline. Secondly, don't dare to dream that people will actually do the things they say they'll do, because they just won't. Next week, I'll regale you with my adventures with not getting Sky this Saturday...