Q. A friend of mine has a maddening habit. She
rings me from her mobile saying urgently, 'Can you ring me straight back?' then hangs up. Clearly she believes that it is much cheaper for me to ring her mobile from my landline than vice versa. This may or may not be the case — who has the time to read leaflets from the telephone companies and work it out? — but if she wants to talk to me, usually just idle chatter, then my feeling is that she should pay. Am I right, Mary? Or have I gone quite mad?
P. de Z., London NW3 A. Why not rum all this pricing confusion to your advantage? Next time you talk to your friend, extract from her the promise that, as soon as she gets home, she will look up her latest mobile-telephone bill and find out what billing programme she is on. Explain that another friend of yours is about to buy a mobile and wants to make sure that she doesn't get duped into buying into the same programme as your friend clearly has: 'I mean, you can never ring anyone yourself can you? People always have to ring you back — and that must make you feel you're being a real nuisance. Poor you. Why don't I look into the different programmes for you, and then I could advise you about which one to switch to?' In this way you should soon see an end to the nuisance.
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