By Stanley Collymore
To any prescient-minded individual who’s even remotely aware of the academic and other standards, or more fittingly so the marked lack of them, in the so-called English Educational System will obviously be very surprised then if more than the proverbial handful of its comparatively recent or just left “graduates” in whatever capacity or level, or indeed the current intake of English students, again at whatever level of “study” they may be involved in have ever heard of George Orwell let alone Animal Farm.
Much less so, I would imagine, the part that the sycophantic, absolutely unthinking, devilishly sociopathic and brutally-inclined psychopathic dogs of Animal Farm willingly and very enthusiastically played in unquestioningly carrying out the orders of and generally acting as the odious bully boys for and keen protectors of the utterly scheming, downright manipulative and obsessively controlling pigs that not only ran but also quite literally dominated the entire environment of in conjunction with coercively subjugating the consequently submissive society of Animal Farm.
2014 seemingly is no different in contextual terms as the corporate bully boy entities of our own contemporary society and communities – and I don’t have to tell you whose they are as their identities are well known – in combination with their intellectually challenged, utterly brain-dead and consummately moronic jobsworth employees like Virgin Media’s, Thomas Parr: Virgin Media Complaints; Karen Ingham: Director of Customer Services; Ramon Fernandez: Resolution manager; Rachel Beardsmore: Head of Payments; Steve Atkinson: Head of Payments Processing and several others; attendant all of them with their fancy and pointless titles but none of them either physiologically or psychologically with anything distinctly worthwhile in their heads or the capacity or ability to inculcate such – constituting in other words both individually and collectively the classic dunderheads, and who in conjunction with the feral propensity of rabid dogs would have better served British society specifically and humanity in general had they all been summarily and uncompromisingly strangled or suffocated at birth thereby precluding all likely possibilities then of them pathetically procreatively producing more of their feral kind – in collusion with determinedly grasping and unethical would-be enforcers like Moorcroft Debt Recovery Limited amply testify to, and comprehensively support my point of view.
This article is the outcome of an unexpected letter sent to me by Moorcroft Debt Recovery Limited of Stockport acting on behalf it said of Virgin Media and that in response I subsequently dispatched by Special Delivery Service on the 12 November 2014 my written reply to them. By and large that would have been the end of the matter certainly as far as I’m concerned, since such correspondences are totally alien to me. However, in view of the numerous and well-documented criminal and highly unethical sharp practices recurrently engaged in by corporate entities operating within the UK of the ilk of Virgin Media, BT, the several utility services and even foreign owned monopolistic ones like Southern Water; activities grotesquely compounded by the patent lack of concern shown for the average customer involved and the seemingly blanket immunity instinctively granted to the aforementioned corporations by the endemically corrupt, obsessively venal, bought and paid for, insidiously crony and so-called regulatory bodies; Ombudsmen/women and their official staff – just as criminally inclined and pervasively unethical as these corporations are – to uninterferingly carry on with their criminal spree backed up with coercive intimidating tactics if anyone dares to stand up to any of them, I’ve accordingly, and not least because they don’t scare me any, decided to share my personal experience with you.
However, let me emphatically stress that I’m not in any way asking for your sympathy or for you to take sides since I really couldn’t care less what anyone thinks in my particular case, as my conscience if absolutely clear and candidly that’s what matters to me anyway. So Virgin media and Moorcroft Limited – or anyone else they might care to draft in – can go fuck themselves or each other if they prefer to; and from my perspective are already fully cognisant of those facts, since I’ve made my position unequivocally and abundantly clear to both sets of antagonists and that’s my job done as far as I’m concerned! With you it’s simply a matter in your case of judging the issue for yourself.
Mr A.J. Martin
Debt Recovery Manager
Moorcroft Debt Recovery Ltd
P.O. Box No.17
2 Spring Gardens
Stockport
SK1 4AJ.
Dear Mr Martin,
Reference your letter to me dated the 24 October 2014 – Reference 0052064404526 (D-PC25-G) – and which has only just come into my possession since I was out of the country; something that frequently occurs in connection with my professional work as well as my private life. I don’t know what fraudulent or downright misleading information whoever it is at Virgin Media that is personally responsible for sending you on this wild goose chase – for that’s precisely what it is – has told you, but my sensible advice to you is categorically and emphatically this. Have virgin Media, I suggest, send you the plethora of letters they’ve received from me from the outset of my unfortunate, as it now seems, dealings with them and the inadequate and prevaricating responses, when they bothered to reply to my letters to them that is, that I’ve in return got from them.
Every one of my letters to Virgin media and named individuals there was sent by First Class Special Delivery Mail. All such mail has to be signed for by the recipient and from the moment it’s posted is meticulously tracked at all its transit stages by Royal Mail which also provides me with a mechanism to do my own independent tracking to ascertain that the specific mail arrived at its destination and was signed for on receipt of having done so.
It’s a costly process but I can afford it, and furthermore with the swelling tide of incompetent and nerdish jobsworths who routinely blame their gross incompetence on others and never themselves, it ensures that none of these prized morons can ever claim, as is invariably their lying wont whether on the receipt of normal letters they’ve received and never action or phone calls that fall into the same category on their part – that they have no recollection whatever of ever having received any of these two things; I therefore unfailingly take the added cautious and sensible precaution of always sending all my correspondences to companies, businesses or their supine representatives by Special Delivery First Class Mail, and categorically never indulge in or make phone calls, nor do I ever accept any in receipt of such undertakings.
Once in print none of this can convincingly be denied and therefore having such correspondences officially and independently monitored and verified speaks for itself. So the added expense is worth it and negates all the otherwise negative aggravation, which with my busy, positive and constructive lifestyle, both professionally and privately, I can well do without and particularly don’t really care for. Additionally, since such transactions are carried out by one-off debit payments and I have the overall receipts to back all this up plus bank statements to corroborate the financial transaction that took place I’m pretty confident that I can substantiate whatever I say.
So I strongly suggest to you that you ask Virgin Media for copies of all these letters which I sent to them; then read them carefully yourself and see if you then conclude that I owe Virgin Media money of any sort which requires the services of a debt collector, however avaricious or actually brain-dead that manager might be, or anyone else come to that to recover. Incidentally, these letters to Virgin media are very detailed, do run at about five pages each minimum and are well written in exquisite Oxford English; the spoken version is generally referred to as the Received Pronunciation.
Both are my specialities as well as my pride and joy, and it accounts for why many years ago I quit the so-called English Educational System principally because I could clearly see the dumbed-down and intellectually challenged manner in which it was precipitously heading; wanted no part of it, and therefore decided to migrate to Germany to happily carry out my Academic pursuits there; and have never regretted that decision. So it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the intellectually challenged, dumbed-down, moronic, jobsworth-nerds happily and ignorantly ensconced in companies like Virgin Media and rather regrettably proliferate in companies elsewhere across our supposedly Green and Pleasant land with their incredibly US-styled and inculcated short attention spans and as a result totally incapable of expressing or stringing two coherent sentences together, had difficulty reading as well as understanding my letters to them. Yet they are the same arrogant Clots who like to declare English as exclusively their language. What a bloody sick joke!
So here then are the salient facts that you should concentrate on and sent to you not because I feel compelled in any way to do so but basically out of common courtesy as is my nature, and equally to apprise you, if you’re not already cognisant of this fact, that there are two sides to every story and not just that of the person or company paying you to do their dirty work for them. And when I have posted this letter to you that will be the last communication I shall be having with you, just as I have similarly done with Virgin Media previously.
The Facts:
On Friday 21 March 2014 from a call box in Worthing Town Centre where I obviously was at the time I phoned Virgin Media. I wanted a landline explicitly to be installed at my UK home purely for emergency purposes and accordingly wanted to ascertain from Virgin Media if they could satisfy my requirements. In my phone call with Virgin Media’s customer service I carefully and meticulously explained why I was calling and that the call was specifically about garnering information. The male I spoke to said Virgin Media could provide the service I needed, reiterating when I repeated to him my requirements - were I to decide to use Virgin Media or anyone else come to that - was a landline only, no frills, nothing else; and the phone was expressly for emergency services only.
When this man then sought to vainly entice me with all the other alleged benefits that having Virgin Media could provide me with I cut him short, politely explaining that I spend a great deal of my time outside of the UK and even when I was in Britain the hours spent at my UK address were miniscule. That I was the only resident at my UK home, assiduously eschewed as a general rule the use of the telephone as a means of communication even with close family members and friends and definitely so with companies and businesses of any sort. That the area I lived in was totally devoid of public telephone boxes; that I respected my own privacy and naturally accorded the same right and courtesy to others and therefore wouldn’t dream of knocking on someone else’s door - day or night - to make a request to make an emergency call if I had to and consequently needed my own telephone for that very specific purpose.
Realizing that his sale’s pitch was getting nowhere and quite fast in the process the male in question who I was speaking to said Virgin Media could provide the service I required and was demanding. When I then asked how much it would cost me, he asked whether or not there was a Virgin Media landline to my property, possibly introduced there by the previous resident. I replied that I had no knowledge of that and that the only landline I was aware of was a BT one and this prior to my taking over the said property. The customer service chap then said Virgin Media didn’t deal with BT and that a Virgin landline would have to be laid to my home, but not to worry as practically all of my neighbours already had Virgin Media in one shape or form so the installation would be a piece of cake, his words.
In relation to the costs I could either opt to pay my landline rental on a monthly basis or else I could pay the full sum for a year’s rental in advance and upfront and were I to do so that figure would be £128.00. In view of the little time spent at my UK home the annual upfront fee seemed logical to me and with the bill cycle for all utilities relevant to me and my home already paid on an annual basis that I thought would evidently preclude my having to contend with monthly bills, especially when I’m out of the country. Next how soon could the phone line be installed if I decided to go ahead with the project I asked? Tuesday 25 March 2014 after 1PM I was told. So having stated once more for clarity that my phone line and service would be used by me strictly for emergency purposes and no other calls would be made or received by me as of choice, and likewise having ascertained that there would be no hidden charges involved for me either that I would later find myself saddled with once I’d given the go-ahead for the landline to be installed I agreed to having a Virgin Media landline installed at my home.
I was then given some options on how to pay the upfront £128.00 annual line rental charge. I could pay by Credit Card – something I’ve never had, needed nor wanted; Debit Card Payment – a one-off payment over the phone there and then; Direct Debit Agreement – something that specifically I have never ever countenanced in my life with anyone or any company nor would I ever do so under any circumstance whatsoever; or I could pay the engineers who carried out the work after the completion by them of the installation of the landline. I chose the one-off debit payment over the telephone; and asked by the customer service chap for my debit card details I gave these to him in all good faith. But as I was without the services of a phone – mobile: which I absolutely detest; the technology is brilliant not so the irritating nerds who inconvenience others with their idiocy, I’ve accordingly resolutely refused to have one in case any similar nerd should think I’m part of that crowd were they to see me in possession of one; or a landline phone, I was asked if I had an email address by which Virgin Media could contact me relative to my transaction; so I gave this chap over the phone as well an email that I use for business purposes.
The previously unexpected transaction over I then got on with my ordinary daily life. Then on the 25 March 2014 I took the day off to accommodate the arrival of the Virgin Media engineer to install my landline phone. He got to my home at about 3PM, had a look around, asininely said that there was no Virgin landline connection to my property – something that the company already knew to be the case – and went on to say that he couldn’t connect me as the job would require specialist engineers to do what was required. He was there for just 5 minutes and I’d wasted an entire day!
Before this guy left however he called his office and had them arrange a new date for my landline to be installed. That date was to be Friday 4 April 2014. In the meantime, my bank had confirmed that the £128.00 upfront, annual landline rental charge fee I’d made over the telephone had been paid to Virgin Media. Then on Friday 4 April 2014 two Virgin Media engineers arrived at my home and as a result my landline was finally installed. However, before they left I made absolutely certain that the landline was up and running as was my phone, which I could then use as I jolly well pleased.
The next development in this ludicrously ongoing saga was a letter from my bank informing me that Virgin Media was attempting to fraudulently use my debit card details given in that one-off £128.00 landline payment over the telephone from Worthing on the 21 March 2014 to set up a Direct Debit Account to my bank account and thus be able to access the latter at will and without my knowledge or permission.
In a Special Delivery letter to my Bank Manager stipulating that I’d given no such authorization to Virgin Media – something that my bank fully aware of my never ever had or likely to authorize any such Direct Debit Agreements to anyone - individual or company - had therefore as a matter of the utmost urgency contacted me because they instantly smelt a foul rat on Virgin Media’s part. At once I wrote a detailed and unambiguous letter to Virgin Media pointing out the illegality of their action simultaneously and categorically outlining my own position and demanding that Virgin Media didn’t try any such fraudulent adventurism again either with me or my bank account. My bank was fully supportive of my actions and also quite prepared to give evidence in any court case that I then or subsequently took against Virgin Media. As well, my bank also informed me that they had instituted extra precautions to safeguard my bank account being subjected to the kind of predatory forays that Virgin Media had sought to embark on.
Virgin Media then sought to lamely and unconvincingly excuse their criminal intent and activities by stating in response to my letter to them that a Direct Debit Agreement would preclude administrative charges levied against me if no such Direct Debit Agreement was entered into by me with them and as a result Virgin Media was obliged instead to send me a paper bill that had to be charged for. What asinine logic!
Firstly why the hell would any intelligent person, which I evidently am, ever want to set up a Direct Debit Account Agreement with anyone or a company like Virgin Media or any other when patently that individual clearly not running up a bill in the first place and furthermore has no intention of ever doing so? And secondly, why send me a ZERO bill that I already know is the case as I’m not making nor have any intention of making any phone calls other than 999 ones if I need to; and on top of that ludicrously charging me as Virgin Media apparently wants to for doing so? Then having the audacity of adding on penalty charges for not paying something that no sensible person would? Would you?
The thickos at Virgin Media however still refused to take the hint or the detailed information staring them right in the face from the letters I wrote to them, or to work out the logic of what I was actually saying to them. I don’t make or answer phone calls at my UK address, provided of course any were to ever come to my knowledge that is. And there are perfectly explainable reasons for these actions. I don’t even know what my phone number is off the top of my head – though I have it written down somewhere – because it’s not something that I want to remember; and additionally I’ve not given my phone number to anyone – not even close family members or friends who wouldn’t have phoned me anyway if they had my number knowing full well my distinct aversion to the telephone – so why the hell then if other person, regardless of who they are, gets hold of my number through Virgin Media or else accidentally comes across it and phones it should I bother to answer them and their call?
I’m an English specialist, love writing letters and I have my own means of communicating with my close friends and family members and don’t want any outsider or phone company to determine how I should go about this. Additionally when I’m away from my UK address I unplug my phone and lock the apparatus – the actual phone – away; and when indoors if it’s plugged in I deliberately have the volume switched off. And why in those circumstances should I want to check to see if someone I don’t know or care about haphazardly or otherwise decides to phone a number I didn’t give to them, even if the caller is someone from Virgin Media who I don’t want to hear from by phone?
Since my phone was installed on Friday the 4 April 2014 I’ve not made any phone calls and have no intention of doing so other than making emergency calls if I have to. Furthermore, I can honestly say that when I’m at home I’m not going to let any phone call(s) disturb my way of life and in the event that I accidently forget to switch the phone ringer off and the phone does happen to ring I shall most certainly not bother to answer it. So far though that hasn’t happened as the ringer on my phone when it’s plugged in is permanently switched off. So do tell me Mr Martin, what the hell then am I getting a telephone bill for and which you seemingly feel honour bound, however stupidly so, to collect and that you have as much chance in my case of doing so as a snowflake has of not perishing in hell. As it’s not going to happen mate!
The bill can’t be for line rental. That was paid upfront, promptly and in full for a year on March 21st 2014 and to the tune of £128.00. Not for line installation charge. That too was paid promptly and in full to the tune of £49.95p even though on the 21st March 2104 I wasn’t told there would be any such charge and only knew about this after the 4 April 2014 when the landline was connected. Even so I didn’t hesitate in paying that bill.
What seems to be peeving the brain-dead nerds at Virgin is that I’m not prepared to nor will I ever allow them or anyone else for that matter to play foot loose and fancy free with my bank account, which after all is my lawfully earned money. Well that’s their problem not mine and I most certainly am not going to make it so. But just sensibly ask yourself why would someone that happily paid upfront in the manner I’ve done with Virgin Media relative to all my genuine costs then inexplicably not pay ensuing bills if these bills were authentically generated by me? It just doesn’t make sense, does it? Not to anyone with a functioning brain cell in his or her head that is!
I’m a truly exemplary citizen, human being and bill payer. Every legitimate bill I get, usually on an annual basis, I check carefully and if satisfied with what’s before me I take the said bill to my bank where the barcode is swiped through the bank’s system, the required sum of money having been at first initialled by me is then automatically transferred from my bank account to the recipient’s and that’s that. If there’s no such barcode the transaction is then carried out manually. Either way the bill is paid in full and the receipt date-stamped by the bank leaving me with physical proof and a paper trail that I’ve carried out my legal and moral, financial obligation. I don’t have online bank accounts or indulge in online banking arrangements or payment systems since I’m all too aware that computer systems can be hacked and or compromised. That’s my approach and I shan’t depart from it - with or without the approval of virgin Media or anyone else - and frankly what other people do differently is a matter entirely for them and none of my business.
Consequently, I’ve never owed anyone a penny in my life and don’t intend to; I don’t or have I ever had debts, Hire Purchase (HP); Credit of any sort; Credit Cards or the like, and have always quite meticulously eschewed such things like the plague, and will continue to do so. At the age of five my perspicacious maternal Grandmother - a policy reinforced by my parents - lovingly cautioned me I should never on any account incur any debts, and if I had a Pound Sterling she said I was to spend a maximum of 60p in today’s money and save the remaining 40p. She also ingenuously advised and instructed me how to differentiate between my needs and what were basically my wants; stating that while the former were important the latter – namely my wants – were invariably not the case, citing that everyone, or most people, completely consumed by materialistic desires might very well want to be multi-millionaires but questioned, was it a need let alone an absolute one relative to the genuine quality of their own life that they should become even a millionaire?
And as such, she impressed upon me that if I needed something, as distinct from simply wanting it, I as a minor I should acquire the money required by doing extra chores at home and get paid for doing them, or else do appropriately paid jobs for other relatives, friends of our family, neighbours, local businesses or the like in the community where I lived; or when I finally became an adult and were in the same situation I should get an extra job to finance that need so I could then conscionably pay for the item or service I needed outright. But that under no circumstance whatsoever should I embark on incurring debt of any sort, try to live or ever embark on doing so outside my financial means. This sound advice I’ve assiduously inculcated within my mindset; have practised throughout my life and is a philosophy I shall always meticulously and unchangingly adhere to. So for anyone, given those circumstances and the context in which they’ve been inbred in me since my early childhood, and not even knowing me to assume I’m otherwise than what I am, that is their predicament and not mine!
Consequently I’m well satisfied with my upbringing and the knowledge that I’ve never owed anyone a penny in my life, and moreover that no one – individual, institution or grasping commercial entities like Virgin Media - can honestly, realistically or honourably knock on my door wherever I live – in the UK or abroad – and convincingly or truthfully claim I owe them anything. And, as such, I’m not worried about anything because my conscience is clear!
This then is a detailed letter to you Mr Martin along the lines of those I’ve sent already, but will no longer, to Virgin Media. Frankly, I’m not seeking to persuade you to my point of view and whatever stance you take is an irrelevance to me. My detailed letter to you is simply to apprise you of the facts taking into account it was you that contacted me by letter, nothing more; and to categorically state I don’t owe Virgin Media any money; and having done that similarly request that you don’t contact me further on this matter.
As for my credit rating likely to be put in peril and affected by all this that’s just laughable! For how can it when I don’t have credit anywhere? And besides, there are laws in this country against libel, and among the acquired through academic prowess and not as courtesy titles as is commonplace in the UK one of the several degrees I proudly possess is in Law. What is more, threatening me with credit sanctions is just as asinine analogously to an azospermiac male permanently unable to produce semen and therefore totally incapable of being a father being risibly told by a commercial artificial insemination clinic that he won’t be shortlisted to be a potential father because he has failed to pay his arbitrarily imposed subscription fees, even though he quite specifically didn’t want to be a part of that clinic’s sex programme in the first place; not least so because he was fully aware of his medical condition. Think on that!
On the 3 April 2015 my landline telephone contract with Virgin Media comes thankfully to an end and likewise all my current limited dealings with this fraudulent entity. In the meantime, I do expect for my phone line which I’ve paid £128.00 for the full year to be operative until then; and should the brains-dead, jobsworth morons at Virgin Media have any lunatic notions of not fulfilling their end of our contractual agreement then they’ll have me to deal with. As for you Mr Martin – GOODBYE or AUF WIEDERSEHEN in their most etymological sense!
Yours etc.
Stanley Collymore.
General Update - Timeline March 2015
The intransigent and utterly purblind lunatics at Virgin Media are still running the asylum there I see while unsurprisingly and entirely unconcerned about their status as such and quite predictably so, as lunatics are both psychologically and analytically absolutely incapable of any such rationale, which is exactly why they are lunatics, have insupportably but none the less noticeably in addition drafted in others of their kind to incomprehensively and rather absurdly in the eyes of those that are not only observant but also sane help out in sustaining their lunatic sanctuary at Virgin Media!
From my perspective I shall simply do what I’ve always done with purblind idiots whoever they are or where they’ve originated from, and that’s to simply studiously ignore them. Unless they stupidly are either unable or unwilling to differentiate between conscious restraint on my part and the idiotic, supercilious and mistaken belief on theirs that my restraint is tantamount to my fear of them, gives them the go-ahead to persist with their asinine behaviour, and which in turn presents an existential for me; something that I most certainly won’t countenance or accept under any circumstance and will most categorically strike back in response with every means at my disposal.
We regrettably live in an extremely dangerous world basically sustained by these sorts of absolutely mindless Jobsworths that in the most toadying fashion imaginable are all too keen to enthusiastically and loutishly implement the prescribed dictates of their corporate paymasters; resolutions which they didn’t have any part in formulating and wouldn’t have been allowed to anyway as they’ve neither the intellectual acumen, the inherent capabilities nor the prescient-minded competence to, and is exactly why they’re the android-type Jobswoths that they are and will forever remain; unquestioningly doing the bidding of those they serve but who nevertheless contemptuously treat them with the disdain that they justifiably deserve while expecting them at all times to totally and robotically do exactly what is demanded of them and more to the point what they’re told to do; the standard remit of all Jobsworths everywhere but seemingly carried out with a frenzied gusto by those employed by Virgin Media.
We’re all cognisant, those who aren’t living in a world of their own, of the damage that is constantly wreaked by western military drones, directly at the behest of the military industrial complex and the multiplicity of corporate entities whose only and greedy motive is the acquisition of profit at any price, on hapless citizens of the Developing World; but in psychological terms there are also human drones as well that work for these corporations, in effect the robotically programmed and totally brain-dead ignoramuses that work for them; and Virgin Media as one such entity is replete with them. That said, how you essay to deal with them is a matter entirely for you but I have my own prescription and will categorically state here what mine is.
I resolutely and always abide by the law of the land in whatever country that I happen to be, and that of course includes my home country the United Kingdom. But I’ve also a rule of thumb philosophy, so to speak, that if someone or persons want to behave like the prized jerks that they are and despite my studied and conspicuous restraint not to be drawn into their malicious madness towards me, I shall unhesitatingly and unapologetically deploy every means at my disposal to uncompromisingly and permanently stop them. That isn’t a threat as I don’t make threats, which are a bloody waste of time I think; simply a steadfast and categorical promise that I stringently adhere to! So idiots - toadying Jobsworths or otherwise - pleased be warned!
