GIRL TALK: Monkey business at the help desk

TELCO rage. We've all been there. And we all know that if we didn't laugh, we'd cry. Or kill.
Nothing is quite so frustrating as communicating with a company that specialises in communicating. I already knew this when I dialled Vodafone's help line two weeks ago and began the fraught and protracted process of changing my phone and broadband services from one location to another.
What I didn't know was that  weeks would pass and I would spend more time talking to the polite but  ineffective customer service rep than my  family, and that our exhausting phone chats each day would be interrupted only by my occasionally putting down my cell phone and banging my head against the nearest wall.
Before the XT failure, we consumers may have come to expect that moving a phone number from one address to another  would be straight-forward in the Age of Technology. These days we know better and as I began the marathon effort I determined to remain Zen regardless of the obstacles. And there were obstacles.
Not that you would believe that when I ended my first call having been assured that within 48 hours my home line and broadband would be relocated.  When  that didn't happen, I cleared a morning in my diary with the intention of calling the 0800 helpline. Several light years after being told by an automated voice that my call would be answered shortly, it was.
I was told that although I was at that moment sitting there, my new location did not actually exist.
For the next week while my business ground to a halt, the friendly chap at Vodafone kept hopelessly fishing for solutions, a little like a hungry man with a handline might in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico right now.
 I  borrowed a friend's computer to check my email, to discover that while my mate in the call centre had been consistently telling me my address couldn't be found, the clever dicks who fire out stock-standard emails to customers who have long since given up hope of ever using a phone to speak to a phone company, had given me  four  different reasons why I couldn't be connected.
On May 12 I was told a request for another service on the line was preventing its connection, but "the good news is, this could be easily fixed". On May 14 I was informed there was insufficient capacity on Telecom's network and - despite being in the middle of a city in the middle of the developed world - I would not be able to get broadband. On May 17 they went back to the first excuse and on May 20 the email simply said the line was invalid (although
to my relief, I was again told "the good news is this can be easily fixed").
A communications company deciding to communicate only via email with a customer whose problem has come about precisely because they don't have access to email made me wonder what sort of monkeys they were employing at Vodafone.
And what fun those monkeys must have each morning when they draw out inaccurate excuses like names from a hat and fire them out  to customers who may, like me, have their livelihood depending on getting the right answer.
 Vodafone eventually told me I needed to speak directly with Telecom. While this didn't help me relocate my Vodafone services, it did put me in direct contact with the opposition who were quite happy to relieve Vodafone of a customer. I was told they could see my new location on their map and expected to have me connected by the end of the next day.
This made me wonder why Vodafone didn't have an automated email instructing customers to simply call their opposition if they wanted efficient service.
They certainly wasted little time in sending me an email to ask for feedback on my recent experiences with the company.
And while I pondered quite how to eloquently compose this response, my cell phone rang and a new chap from Vodafone cheerfully informed me that they had finally identified the problem: they couldn't locate my new address.
However, he reassured me, I was not to worry because this could easily be fixed.
Again, how exactly does one respond?