Three months ago I had a bit of a go at Virgin Media. Sohaving just moved house it gave me the perfect opportunity to ditch Virgin and switchallegiance to the shiny world of Sky.

And yet I didn't. In fact I've just signed up to Virgin allover again. Why? Two letters: BT.

In my haste to share my frustrations about Virgin in July Iforgot one fundamental point: Sky's all-in-one package relies on having a BTline, and Virgin's does not.

Yesterday I started the day with the seemingly simple goalof getting a BT phone line up and running in my new home. For the sake ofconvenience I was happy to sign up to BT's Total Broadband service too, maybeeven BT Vision. But I underestimated the bureaucratic life-sapping power of BT.

I dialled the BT call centre, and it took 28 minutes to get throughto a real human. Mercifully I was spared any kind of elevator music in thebackground - half an hour of 'Greensleeves' could really have killed me off.

I was then told that the number I had dialled - which the BTwebsite said was the number to call for new connections - was not in fact thenumber to call for new connections.

To make me feel better, however, I was given a number tocall that would bypass the call centre and take me straight through to someonewho would be able to help me. This is a number I will keep forever, I canassure you.

I dialled the number. This time I got access to a real humanstraight away, who helpfully said they would put me through to the direct salesteam, and then promptly transferred the call... you guessed it... back into theoriginal queue.

This was simply too much to bear, and I put the phone down. Idid consider the irony of being unable to activate a phone line by actually phoningthe phone company on one of its own phones. But it didn't make me feel anybetter.

So I went back to Virgin, simply because it meant not havingto deal with BT again.

And after criticising Virgin's service in July, I have toadd that the guy I spoke to was friendly and helpful. On top of that, he was areal human and I only had to wait about three minutes to speak to him.

I'm cynical enough to suspect that this was down to luck,and that next time I phone Virgin I'll be on the phone for two hours to make upfor it. But yesterday, against all the odds, Virgin regained an old customer.And BT lost a new one.