Coffee O'Clock
I'm working from home today – to wait for a telephone network engineer visit – to figure out what's wrong with our internet connection.
He arrived late this morning, and immediately set about replacing the wiring and phone socket in the front of our house, and tinkered with the junction box half a mile from the house.
I asked him if he wanted a cup of tea – and then discovered the kids had drunk all the milk. While he tested this and that with a testing tool, Miss 14 (who is on an inset day) ran to the corner shop for more milk. On her return I shouted 'do you want sugar in your tea?', and then discovered the kids had eaten all the sugar too. It's a circular story around here – you look for something that was there yesterday, and invariably the kids have eaten or drunk it.
After testing the phone socket, the internet router, and various wires, we decided that the router was at fault – essentially halving the speed of the internet connection that reaches it. I then spent half an hour on the phone with our internet service provider, renewing our contract, and getting them to send a new router. Actually – I spent half an hour on hold in the tech-support maze somewhere in India, before being transferred back to the UK for the contracts department.
While talking to the contracts department (who would renew the contract, and give us a new router for free), I asked a simple question:
'Why is it going to cost me 31 a month, when it only costs new customers 22 a month?'
'That offer is only available to new customers'.
'But I'm out of contract – I'm a new customer – a new contract'.
'That offer is only available to new customers'.
'Ok – what about the router – are there any options to get a better router?'
'Oh, the new package comes with a new model of router that's much better than previously.'
'What's it called?'
(he tells me the model name)
'That's what we have.'
'No, you haven't got one of those – you've got the old model'
'Well it's the same name.'
(the conversation went round in circles from there)...
Nothing is ever simple, and it seems everybody sits on a throne of lies these days.
I have one more problem to solve – we suspect the wire from the wall-socket to the router is partly to blame for the problems with the internet connection, so I've ordered a new one. I thought I might be able to get one in town, but after doing a lap of the main streets with our youngest, came up empty-handed. The town we live in is becoming increasingly terrible – filled with coffee shops, boutique restaurants, craft beer pubs, hair salons, and clothes shops for women of a certain age.
This was an informational broadcast on behalf of the you're probably not interested party.
I should get on with some work.