I hate technology.
Or it hates me, I’m never sure.
I feel like I’ve been dragged, kicking and screaming, into a world whose sole purpose is to befuddle, annoy and frustrate me.
When it works, it’s great. I love that I can do my shopping without ever needing to go to a shop. I appreciate being able to catch up with friends and family who live far, far away. I’m amazed that I can write my book without wasting paper. I marvel at my tiny Kindle that holds over 1,000 books (though only just – any more than that and I usually have to delete some).
I also love living in such a peaceful part of the world, in the countryside, on the beautiful Ards peninsula. The downside of that is that our internet is not great, mainly due to the antiquated copper lines that serve our area and our distance from a junction box. But things had improved. I’ve been lulled into a false sense of security over the past 6 months, because we’ve had a pretty reliable and reasonable service, with download speeds of around 7mbs.
But 3 weeks ago our speeds dropped to 0.1-0.5mbs and every few seconds the signal was dropping completely. Which means waiting 5 minutes, sometimes more, for web pages to load.
So I’ve had the dubious pleasure of contacting BT on a regular basis – roughly every other day – because of this very poor wireless broadband service.
They tried three different remote fixes. Things were no better.
Eventually they sent an engineer (a copper line engineer, not a broadband engineer -apparently these are two separate beasts). The line engineer fiddled with bits of the line, replaced a couple of connectors and declared everything was fine. But the broadband was no better.
“You have to leave it for at least 24 hours” declared Himself, taking on an undeserved mantle of telephonic knowledge.
I did. Things were no better. I rang BT again.
They said they’d send a new hub to arrive in a further three days’ time.
It didn’t.
So I rang again. Apparently the hub order had “got stuck” – a new technical term I didn’t recognise. The order was resent and I was promised it would arrive in two or three days’ time.
The next day I picked up the phone to ring my mum – and the line popped and crackled away like a fizzing bottle of champagne.
So I rang BT again.
Another line engineer was sent out. She found a fault on the line but couldn’t fix it because she needed a detector person to find where the line runs outside my study.
As I write this, the saga has been going on for three whole weeks and we’re waiting for them to come in the next two working days.
I’ll let you know what happens.
BT is a vast company which has split off various parts of the business. That may be a good commercial move, but it does nothing for their customer service, which, quite frankly, is dreadful.
At Down Dog we pride ourselves on our responsiveness and availability. Our website lets you book the help you need, when you need it. And you know you can email us at any time to get our advice and help and we’ll give it – as long as we can actually open our emails….
Keep training,
Carol