Why, WHY must my dealings (well, thinking in particular of my last two months) with service providers / businesses leave me with the impression that there are only two kinds of people working in such enterprises: 1. Lazy, Incompetent muppets, and 2. Conniving, scheming, rip-off merchants; neither of which type care in the slightest how much the customer is being fecked around?
Between keysmiths, property developers, letting agents, landlords, mechanics, and most recently, mobile phone companies, I’ve had it up to here ———> (nts) with the lot of ‘em.

The freshest example (briefly): after agreeing to cancel a contract due to inability to obtain a signal, (and after hours on the phone and days in the shop with Vodafone and O2 because each blamed the other for not getting the porting / contract cancellation details right - depending on who you believe),O2 agreed to cancel a contract without fuss or charge, within the terms of their ‘cooling off’ period. And what do we find in our postbox yesterday? “Dear Sir, [stuff]… disconnection fee of €196. ” The mind doesn’t boggle any more, it almost anticipates corporate idiocy; it just wants to ….just wants to… to….[mumblemumble] *begins collecting blunt, stabby implements*

Has something changed in Ireland? Did we have business ethics before, or has the greedy celtic tiger started eating souls? I remember a time when people sometimes tried to actually help you, or welcome your custom, or compensate you for trouble, or offered you practical, alternative solutions without first trailling you through hours of escalations, feckups and fingerpointing….
I know I’m painting the lot with the same brush, but does anyone else feel similarly aggravated at the moment?