THURSDAY: So, my broadband connection speed has dropped from the normal, Cornish, mind-numbingly slow 800kbps, to a pre-21st century 350-400kbps.
For those readers not into the technical number-geekery of the internet, that is like slowing down an experienced typist to the sort of speeds achievable by chiselling letters into a block of granite with a chisel made out of well-chewed celery and a hammer with all the rigidity of overcooked spaghetti!
So slow is this, that I can't even stream music courtesy of Spotify, as my computer keeps thinking the connection is gone, and tries to re-establish it, with hilarious (NOT) results.
After almost 2 hours on the phone to my Internet Service Provider (Orange), during which time we seem to have tested almost everything except my inside leg measurement (and we may even have done that for all I know), the very nice man in Mumbai pronounced everything well at their end, everything working from my telephone socket to my computer, and decided that it must be a line or exchange problem. He suggested I phone BT and take it up with them.
Gentle reader, at that point, I couldn't take any more geekery, accented English, or long pauses while the next stage of the process loaded, so I decided to leave it till the next day.
THE NEXT DAY: Today I phoned BT, and spoke, if not to the same gentleman I spoke to at Orange, then to one of his many brothers, presumably also lurking somewhere in the Indian sub-continent.
He too performed many tests, but kindly allowed me to hang up while he did so, and have a cup of coffee. I suspect he had one too. He then phoned me back, and with great pride announced that he had found the source of the problem, and that it was indeed somewhere in the exchange. (Why would you be proud that you'd found a cock-up in your own system?)
With equal pride, he informed me that he had already set his finest engineers to tackling the problem, and they estimated that it would located, assessed and corrected - by Wednesday 20 July.
Now - and correct me if I'm wrong - the year is 2011. Technology is at its peak. We have sent men to the moon, robots to Mars, and can fry eggs without glueing them to the frying pan. But it's going to take five days to fix a minor problem in a town telephone exchange!?
If I told one of my clients that it's going to take five days to fix a problem on their website, or correct a mistake in their accounts, they would quite rightly insert something prickly into a place where prickly things should not be found.
But BT, because they are one of the biggest companies in the UK, can sit back, make that pronouncement, and know in their telephonic smugness that there is nothing I can do about it.
Bastards!!
I know the feeling. I had a problem at the last house that took seven months to sort out. I was with Virgin who were very good and even gave me a great big credit at the end for the times I couldn't use the service.
ReplyDeleteAfter 5 visits from BT, they eventually sent three men down including the bloke from the training centre who trains the broadband engineers. It took the three of them a whole day to find the problem which turned out to be the bit of wire between the house and the telegraph pole over the road. Apparently the service was dropping out when the noise levels on the line rose beyond a certain peak.
New wire - problem gone. Ironically, I suggested to the first engineer that he should try that first, but he was on a time restraint and just fitted a new master socket - which achieved nothing. Therein lies the problem.
Beware the standard BT answer - "our responsibility stops at the master socket. Any wiring in the house is bugger all to do with us!"