Saturday 16th February 2008

Me and Wilma sleeping with our teddy bears close at paw

‘The Internet Saga’

It was a dark and stormy night. Ok, I made that bit up, but the story has been so bad that it felt as though that was how it should start. I told you about my master’s bid for Sky tv and how my mistress ‘gave in’ although she had already decided to get it anyway, well that plan was spoilt by there not being any cable provision in the village and not being able to put a satellite dish on the house we are renting. What has this got to do with the internet? Well when my mistress ordered the phone she didn’t order broadband as we were going to get it with the tv package. Once she realised she couldn’t do that she rang to order broadband from BT. Actually to be strictly accurate she tried ordering it on-line but it said the phone line didn’t support broadband so she rang a human being. She was told that as it was a new line it would come up saying that and she should try again in 48hours. Day 3 arrived and it still said the same, so she rang BT again and a very nice man said he had removed a ‘block’ on the line and he could now take the order. The line would be active on day 9. Day 9 arrived but broadband didn’t, so my mistress rang a lady who couldn’t find the order and told her the line would not support broadband. As you can imagine my mistress was not a happy person. She asked for a more detailed explanation. An hour, four humans and a lot of anguish later, my mistress eventually got the answer that the BT exchange had no more capacity but another provider might be able to help. Why couldn’t they tell her that on day 1? My poor mistress eventually found a provider who does have capacity and has placed an order with them. Connection is now expected for day 16 and this is in a country that speaks the same language!