Back in the day when I was of no fixed abode I occasionally explained my absence from these pages by pointing to a lack of broadband. That excuse hasn't been trotted out for a while, but one of the founding principles of this blog is that all topics will be recycled at some point. So, I haven't been here because my broadband hasn't been working.
My house is connected to Virgin cable, but another founding principle of this blog is that beardy Branson is a twat. All other fibre optic service providers are installed by BT Openreach, who have entertained me with six months of unlikely solutions to the challenge, ranging from closing the A659 completely for a couple of days while they dug a trench across it to installing my own personal telegraph pole in my garden. In the end they did what I would have done all along, namely replace the existing copper wire that was already there with a fibre optic one. At that point the existing service was turned off, and....nothing. However, a mere six days later the new system is at last up and running. It's a bit faster I suppose and I've now got one of those phones that won't work if there's a power cut; there's progress for you. I have also been given £10.08 compensation for the inconvenience caused; love the precision.
Lol...progress indeed. We had a similar experience when my wife uncharacteristicaly fell for one of the "we can save you fifty dollars a month" lines from an alternative provider. It was all arranged to happen in a couple of weeks but of course it got messed up. The current provider (Telecom/Chorus/ whatever they are called this month) turned off the existing connection a couple of days later..leaving the prospect of ten days with no internet....which I could have lived with but apparently no one else in the house would countenance. After late evening phone calls to both old and new providers, my wife cancelled the new provider....but now, the old provider had to send a technician out to move us over to high speed broadband as we had cancelled the old copper connection. He duly arrived on a Saturday and spent most of the afternoon with me....the rest of the family were out. What he expected to be a fifteen minute job ended up taking about three hours, as he went in and out to his van to bring in an ever increasing array of tools and equipment! The final insult was that the "reconnection" cost us $300.....so much for saving us money!
ReplyDeleteThink you sum up Virgin and it's boss very well - NOT a fan of them .
ReplyDeleteThe beardy twat sold the telecoms company years ago. But it’s still run by twats according to my mate who used to work there.
ReplyDeleteWhat was the 8p for?
Chris/Nundanket
Back in the day before he sold off all the businesses two of the most senior figures in his organisation were a chap I used to work for and a chap I was at business school with, both of whom were very far from being twats. My own hypothesis is that the sizable licensing fee that the current owners of all the things branded as Virgin pay him has to come from somewhere and they all seem to take it out of customer service.
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