I have just wasted three hours of my life and had my blood pressure raised to a dangerous level, by BT "customer service" - an oxymoron if ever there was one. My e-mails stopped having attachments attached. Many calls later to the UK and India, and I discover that there is an "outage", whatever that is, and customers everywhere were having difficulties with their mail.

I try to complain, on the basis that if BT were a rail company forced to cancel trains, then they would probably let their customers know. Many UK calls later I think I am being put through to a manager. Instead, I am back in Bangalore getting nowhere.

I wonder if there is a way of contracting someone senior in the UK I can complain to directly about BT's shoddy treatment of their customers, or is there no alternative to logic-bending call-centres?

Peter Broughan, The Birches, School Road, Gartocharn.