Part 26 of the Confessions of a Studio Owner: Buy British….

Part 26 of  Confessions of a Studio Owner: Buy British…. Where Quality Comes First

Ah……the strike at BA…..what to do? Currently paid twice as much as their Virgin counterparts, the cabin crew are asked to get real and take some pain…and they strike…in the middle of a recession….with volcanoes….during the World Cup….nice one! A whole generation will never fly BA again and will now fly Ryan Air even if they only have outdoor toilets. Why are union executives always scousers…with tans? When I hear them on TV, I think of British Leyland (there you go….another British!) going on strike because a dinner lady was sacked after stealing a bacon butty.

Compressor advice to British Airways staff: you need to get back to work so you can pay your rent. Once back, look for another job. Trust me, if you don’t you will either a) lose your job anyway as BA will have gone bust b) gone bust yourself as the bank will repossess your home. Principle and pride killed a lot of people…do the right thing and be a scab because you’re days are numbered….seriously….the Compressor knows what he’s talking about.

Which brings me onto other British suppliers…namely British Gas and British Telecom (we’ll leave BP for another day.) I have the misfortune of having both providers at my other studio in the UK:

British Gas bought an electricity company a year or so ago that had gone bust (called Bizz Energy.) Unfortunately, Bizz Energy was the supplier of power to Compressor Towers. They were cheap….but there was a reason. They didn’t seem to have any staff. I asked a hundred times for a reading but all they did was keep sending out estimates….then they went bust. British Gas took them over, did a reading and then sent me a bill for £14,000! Well, I don’t know what you would have done, but I shat myself. I genuinely thought it was time to ‘turn the lights out’ as I couldn’t see a way out. I’m not usually one to moan, but I feel there has been a slight injustice here. OK, I negotiated a re-payment plan, and I’m now down to £4,000 and I’ve been paying £1500 per month (which of course includes my current usage as well!) Additionally, I am still bound by a contract that has me locked in until the end of this year. Meanwhile, if I was a new client to British Gas….I can get a rate 25% lower than the one I’m currently paying….that can’t be right. Like BA….I can’t wait to leave British Gas and I will happily try Scottish Power or another firm that offers a lower rate. I will NEVER go back to British Gas as I believe they have rogered me….please do not go there.

British Telecom supply our lines and broadband. Compressor Towers suffers from low speeds when the kids get home from school and log onto the interweb and do the myface thing (or more likely xhamster.com.) This affects bands (who are using their lap tops), producers (who are trying to transfer files) and me….because I can’t watch empflix.com at my desk if the broadband is clogged. BT had called up asking if they could come and show us their new servers which I thought could be a good idea for my studio. The subject of my slow broadband came up…and BT recommended I had my own BTnet line, a private network that would enable lightning speed porn….I mean bandwidth! One condition…..it HAD to be wifi compatible to which they agreed. If I signed up the same day they would waive the £8,000 connection fee! I was sold….and looked forward to speedy times ahead…or not. The line was installed two months later, the router turned up by DHL….then we waited for the engineer…and waited…and waited. Eventually, he arrived….took one look and asked me which computer would I be plugging into the router….as BTnet didn’t do wifi?

And so the shit fight began. BT denied that they had done anything wrong, but luckily I had all my emails as proof that BT were idiots. SEVEN months later….I still have the router….I get bills for £4,000 which I ignore….and I get called once a week without fail asking me if I’m happy with my BTnet service. I’m not racist, but these guys are calling me from Manila…and they don’t speak English properly. This week they called me….asked me about my unpaid bill…then transferred me to Mumbai…where they proceeded to ask me what I wanted? I cannot tell you how dumb this company is….they have f@£$%d up every step of the way…and as one employee told me ‘we’re so big now, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing!’

The irony is a) BT called me to sell me a server and ended up selling me a piece of shit router that never worked b) British Gas were my supplier through Bizz going bust. I can’t wait to leave both of them as they are ‘kin useless!

I hope my experience can be used by you to your advantage

TTFN

The Compressor