That was easy!

For a long time I have been meaning to cancel a Spanish telephone line. When my parents overwintered there, it made sense to have a phone. But now the place is used just for holidays and in any case we now have mobiles.

I have been putting it off because I had read horror stories about Telefonica customer services, and indeed had experienced their bureaucratic maze myself several years ago. That was when I tried to return the old rotary dial handset which was on rental, to replace it with a pushbutton handset I had bought.

I was told to take it to the Telefonica shop in town, get a receipt and then phone back to arrange the billing adjustment. So I did, but on phoning back, they said that that was the wrong procedure! They have continued to charge handset rental to this day, and I have lost the receipt.

Of course it would help if I could speak Spanish, but in school they taught me French and German and my brain doesn’t seem to have room for a third language. Fortunately Telefonica has a special number you can ring from outside Spain if you want to speak to them in English, French, Spanish or German (+34 917 073 921).

They ask you why you want to cancel, and they need the account holder’s passport number. In lieu of that they will accept the last four digits of the bank account from which direct debits are taken.

So far so good! There was a long pause during which time I was rehearsing in my head the story of the now missing handset. But I need not have worried. “It will be cancelled within 48 hours. Have a nice day.” And that was it! Should have done it ages ago. Tres hurras for Telefonica.