radiac.net

I don't mind people ringing me up to sell me stuff. Well, that's not true - it interrupts my work and wastes my time, because I never have and never will buy something from someone who approaches me out of the blue. But I don't mind them quite so much if they're polite.

I've recently been getting a lot of calls on my mobile from random companies implying they are Orange wanting to do me a good deal on my contract. Slick, seeing as I haven't been with Orange for several months. I usually say "Thank you, but I'm not interested", and they say "Oh thank you, sorry to waste your time". It's common courtesy.

However, I've just had a call from someone who said "Hello, I'm calling from <random company> about your Orange contract?"

I replied "Oh, thank you but I'm not interested."

And with that, I swear I heard him mutter a word too rude for me to repeat, and hung up. GRR.

Is there anyone I can report these people to? The ICO for them ignoring that I'm registered on the TPS? The OFT for mis-representating themselves? The police for an ASBO?

Yes kids, it's that time of the year again - the sun is out, the schools are on holiday, and BT have screwed me over again.

I was kinda expecting something to go wrong. Even I can spot a pattern - last time BT got anything right was in 2002.

In 2004, they said I'd be fine to set up broadband on the new line, I placed an order with Zen, and the order failed. The line was an old-school hard-wired line, and would have to be replaced for stupid money. I decided against that, and went with Blueyonder. Internet connection delayed by 14 days.

In 2005... well, I'm sure you remember what happened in 2005. BT ceased my ADSL service 21 days after I placed the order, much joy ensued, followed by more happy happy fun times, although it did work out in the end. Internet connection delayed by 37 days.

So, roll on 2006.

I thought I'd leave plenty of time to get the internet sorted in our new house in Cheltenham. I've got more work on now than I have ever had in the past, and most of it's web-based, so I can't really afford to be offline for 37 days again. Expecting a problem, we took over the tenancy on 8th July, and are moving in on the 20th. Plenty of time, right?

When I rang up on the 8th, I spoke to a man who thought my name was Richard Herring. That really should have been my first clue that things were not going to go smoothly.

We spoke for a while. Firstly he had great difficulty finding my flat. Then he couldn't find the phone line that went into the flat. Once he had found it, he told me it had been ceased rather than stopped, so it would have to be turned on by an engineer who might need to come round.

"Great," I said. "When will that be?", I said.

"Tuesday 18th. Would you like that in the morning or the evening?"

Yep, so we've already got 10 days of delays before anything starts. Whoopdedoo.

So late last night I stuffed a chair and the inflatable bed into my car, and drove the 4 hour journey up to Cheltenham ready for my appointment with the engineer between 9am and 1pm the next day. I got to Cheltenham at 11pm, spent an hour pumping up the inflatable bed, then realised I had forgotten any blankets. I had a fitful few hours sleep, and woke up at 5am, shivering.

Granted, none of this was BT's fault, and to be honest I wasn't too upset at it - it was a necessary inconvenience, and it would all be worth it when 9am rolled around.

However, when it got to 1pm and I still didn't have my phone line, it would be fair to say that I was starting to get a little upset. I rang up BT on my mobile.

"Hello, I've been waiting for the engineer as instructed, and I'm supposed to have a phone line by now, but it's 1:15 and there's still no dial tone. Could you please tell me what's going on?"

"Errr... what engineer? Did you have a specific date? You did? Hmm. You only have one order, and there's no appointment associated with that - it's flagged as waiting for more information from the customer."

Yes, loyal regular readers, I've just wasted two days, £60 petrol, have driven for 8 hours, slept for 4 hours on an uncomfortable inflatable bed with no blankets, just to be in the house "in case the engineer needs to get in" for an appointment that they forgot to book in the first place.

I will not subject you to the rest of the... conversation I had with the nice lady, for it was not pretty.

Needless to say, there was no reason for the order being flagged, she clicked her mouse and has now booked me an engineer for the 25th July. Phone line delayed by at least 17 days.

She assured me - four times - that it has now been ordered. Think I'll be ringing up tomorrow just to check though.

Then there's Plusnet, who seem to have done away with their sit-in-the-queue-for-8-hours telephone customer support, which is a shame because I enjoyed the on-hold music. Their shiny new automated telephone system tells you to go to portal.plus.net and then hangs up on you - that's great,

1. if I could get me a response without waiting 7 hours (and counting) for my ticket to make it through the support queue
2. IF I COULD GET ON THE INTERNET IN THE FIRST PLACE

So I've missed the 5 working day window, although hopefully they can get it going for the 26th. Grr. Less said about that wasted hour (before my phone battery died) the better.

Tuesday's Horrorscope (Pisces): Hell has not frozen over, so if you are moving house this week and hope to get BT to sell you something, or Plusnet to reprovision your broadband without a three week delay, you have troubled times ahead.

My local server Uriel is going offline now. It probably won't be back up until 1st August - if you use any of the services I provide on it, try using Qapla, I've switched most of them over to that.

Yes, so as I said... August 1st. Because BT have messed up, I cannot request my Plusnet ADSL reprovision until 25th at the earliest, which means that I can't get it until 1st August - assuming nothing else goes wrong. Which you can bet it will.

I'll still be online fairly regularly though - going to get a months t-mobile wifi pass and live in Starbucks. It's not that I'm addicted to the internet, I need it for my work. At least that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it :)

I have a phone line, yay! But of course, Plusnet can't get ADSL up and running until Wed 02 Aug. And my temporary mail server has disappeared (probably buckled under the weight of my spam - so much for taking the strain during my move) and so I can't pick that up - tried to get it direct, but after being sat here on a t-mobile connection in starbucks for 5 minutes it had only downloaded 100 of 74039, so I figured I'd give up on that. Which is a real pain, because I know I have a lot of work waiting for me in my inbox - panicking a bit. BT are going to get a rude letter for messing me around like this - I demand compensation!

More about the move later. Suffice it to say, everything is going well, apart from the water pipes, which have leaked all over the carpet. Joy.

Update: Qapla is now up and running again. Apologies to those who have missed it! And anyone who has sent me an e-mail, it's looking like it might take a little longer to download it all - ~10,000 downloaded, another ~70,000 to go. Will reply as soon as possible.

I'm considering using some kind of VoIP service, and I'm interested to see if any of you are using one?

I'm currently looking at services with an incoming landline number and call forwarding. That would mean that I can get a single number, give that out to clients, and I can then forward that to whichever phone I am closest to, or a central answerphone if I'm unavailable. Sounds like a good plan to me.

DavidH suggested Skype, and it looks quite good. There is a cheap annual fee, but I'd have to pay 1.4p/min for each incoming call, and then it looks like a futher 1.4p/min to have it forwarded to a landline or my mobile. I don't like the idea of being at the mercy of whoever's ringing me - if it's a client then fair enough, but paying 2.8p/min to deal with telesales or wrong numbers makes me want to cry.

So, has anyone had any experience with VoIP? Do you know somewhere who might work out cheaper than Skype, or who may let me pay an up-front rental fee without the added per-minute charges?

I am off on holiday tomorrow - Leela and I are going to Fuerteventura for a week. It's my first real holiday since South Africa nearly two years ago, so I'm looking forward to it. Until recently I didn't know a word of Spanish, but thanks to the babel fish I now know three: café del Internet? Score.