I’m baaaaack!

Well sorta kinda anyhow. And now I would like to RANT a bit . . .

It all started last week when my internet connection kept conking out for 5-10 minutes at a time. Annoying, but not worth calling the server and raising my blood pressure (which happens every time I call those ‘customer inconvenience’ numbers). Then last Friday afternoon the internet connection went kaput so I had no option but to call.

I was told that since I had changed my ‘Orange product’ from ADSL to ADSL + Calls they had to do a ‘line change’ but it would all be working fine within 24 hours. I asked why they were doing this change now (I had made the change back in October) and of course there was no answer for this. So fine, I finally gave up and decided to check it again on Saturday.

And woo-hoo, my internet connection was back and functioning fine on Saturday morning. Except I suddenly had no telephone service.

I decided to wait until Monday morning to call Telefónica about that since I hardly ever use my landline phone, and when I did they had the problem fixed within about half an hour. But just before that my internet went kaput again and has been that way ever since. The worst part being the daily phone calls to the ‘customer inconvencience’ centres (including the ones made last Friday) and getting a different story/excuse each time. Of course adding injury to insult is the fact that it costs a small fortune to call these ‘902’ numbers and takes at least 5 minutes of marking numbers and identifying yourself before you even get started …

Last night I was sooooo upset after my last run-in with total ineptitude that I sent a very angry fax to Orange, knowing full well it wouldn’t help a jot. But it’s that helpless feeling more than anything else that totally drives me mental and makes my blood pressure soar – knowing that I am dealing with complete robotrons on the other end of the line who don’t give a flying fuck. I told each and every one of them that I work from home and need my internet connection for my business and that every day I was without internet I was losing business and income (well okay, slight exaggeration, but how are they to know). Anyhow, did absolutely no good as the moron on the other end of the line either played dumb (or most likely wasn’t playing) or found something or someone else to blame. The really annoying thing was that every day I was promised that a technician would call me and explain the problem. Needless to say I never received any such call.

And that’s why I posted from the gym this morning. I had totally given up getting the mysterious problem fixed by the weekend. But then a couple of hours ago I said to Nog – ‘May as well make the daily pointless call to Orange just to see what’s not going on…’

And well, I’ll be hornswaggled! There was an actual human being on the other end of the line! And one with a brain in his head! I once again explained that I needed an internet connection at home for my work, that it wasn’t just a case of me wanting to do a bit of surfing or whatever – I really needed internet at home! And he said that since that was the case he could offer me a temporary free 24 hour dial-up connection until I got my ADSL problem sorted out.

And okay, it took about 15 minutes to set up and it’s not as fast as my ADSL connection, but at least I’m connected!!! And I said to my new-found hero Mario – ‘Why the hell didn’t someone offer me this on Monday or Tuesday when I explained that I needed the internet for work???’ – and of course he had no idea. But I asked him to repeat his surname because I really want to send another fax to Orange, saying how this was the only employee out of more than a dozen who actually cared enough to help me.

Meanwhile, although not having internet at home for the biz stuff was a pain (I have a couple of part-time jobs that require me to check on things/answer emails every day) it was kind of interesting not to have the personal-access thang …

At first it was weird. Like a limb missing or something. And not quite knowing what to do with myself at times. But after a day or two it came to feel almost normal! I got more reading done. Also, having the translations to work on took up a lot of ‘sitting in front of the computer’ time. But I did miss checking in on blogs and reading the daily ‘papers’ that I like. And really, just the convenience of having the at my fingertips.

Anyhoodle, will slowly and gently work my way through the backlog over the weekend … thanks to all of you who missed me (or even noticed me missing) ! 😉