Thursday, March 01, 2007

Broadband Woe

It seems that everyone in the country is complaining about broadband at the moment. With good reason in several cases. So, here is my story of broadband woe:

On the 20th January, I got a new phone from my mobile provider, with the explicit desire to get free broadband from that provider. This required me to take out an 18month contract, which I had to do to upgrade and change plans anyway. I was happy with this (see other issues in Phone and successful phone-getting in General-ness)
However, on the day I purchased the phone I was told that I’d have to call up the next day to do the broadband as my phone wasn’t activated. Fine.
So I did.
That didn’t work. They had some kind of issue, and asked me to call back in a week.
So I did.
They had to set me up in someone else’s name (I didn’t much like that, but the man said it would be fine) five days later, we did receive a modem in someone else’s name.
The man had also said that our broadband would just automatically switch over.
On the 27th Feb I was a bit worried that it hadn’t switched (and we were still paying our existing provider) so I called my mobile provider’s help. They lady on the phone was very nice and very apologetic. However, she informed me that the order for the broadband had been cancelled and so I’d have to start the process again.
This means several things for me:
  1. I have paid for broadband from my existing provider for an extra month
  2. I have to call my existing provider again to get a new MAC as the old one has expired (this will be my third MAC)
  3. I will probably have to restart my contract, which basically means they’ve tied me in for 19 months by being incompetent.
  4. I will be writing a strongly worded letter to my provider complaining.
It’s a shame, because up until last September they’d been really good mobile phone providers.

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