First person: Ruth Walker

I chose Sky – their call centre is in Fife so I can head over the Forth witha baseball bat if things turn nasty

CHANGE broadband, I thought, and get a cut-price deal. What could be simpler? Even better, by combining TV, phone and broadband, I'd make a killing. Genius.

Two months on, I have had my phone cut off for a weekend (don't these people know I have a social life to maintain?), have been without broadband for a month and have the local Samaritans office on speed dial for when I have a particularly upsetting episode with the call centre.

Still, at least we have telly, so the kids are happy (when they're not fighting over the relative merits of Hannah Montana, iCarly and something called Fact or Fiction, which is presented by a bloke from Star Trek and seems to be designed to give small children nightmares… so you can guess which one gets my vote).

It had all seemed so simple. When my previous broadband contract expired I had decided to put the whole kit and caboodle in the hands of good old reliable BT. They'd look after me. The problem was that the bill was still in the name of my ex-husband (that missing 's' making it Mr instead of Mrs is a big problem, apparently, even though I'd paid the bill religiously for the past eight years) so I'd have to close that account and open a new one, which would take ten working days, before I could even begin to process any new order. Too long. I was a woman on a mission and needed things done pronto. So thanks, BT, but no thanks. Virgin was my next port of call. They'd been stalking me for months with junk mail begging me to part with my hard-earned cash, so would surely be delighted to welcome me as a new customer.

Yes, Mrs Walker, we'd love to provide all three services at a super-dooper discount, they cried. A date was made with their friendly engineer and a wireless router promptly appeared on my doorstep... along with an ominous letter. Virgin had, it seemed, reached its limit on phone lines in my area (how careless!) so could no longer offer me that service. However, it would still be happy to provide broadband and telly – at twice my original quote.

Patience already severely stretched and fast running out of options, I called Sky. For one thing, their call centre is in sunny Fife, so I could at least head across the Forth with a baseball bat if things turned nasty. I feel I bonded with the salesman. We discussed our viewing habits, talked about our children... he even managed to persuade me to buy a new-fangled Sky Plus box to record all those programmes I never even wanted to see once, let alone keep for posterity. The engineers duly came and fitted a big, ugly dish on my bathroom wall (there goes the neighbourhood) but there was no word on broadband. Three days later I was cut off. And so I remain.

It turns out BT (bless their little hearts) got a bit confused over the Mr and Mrs thing so just cut me off anyway – bang on the day Sky wanted to take over my broadband. Rather than inform their increasingly irate customer about this slight hiccup in proceedings, Sky decided to install my new phone line instead. Except they didn't tell me they could only do one at a time. So the phone line would take a week, then broadband another ten days. I hope finally to have access to the internet sometime in 2010.

In the meantime, BT have charged me £30 for reconnecting the phone they cut off in error. But at least they wrote to apologise for the inconvenience. They'd tried to call, they said, but had been unable to get through. It seems the line was dead.