dottyspots

Broadband is dead.

I don’t know what happened - I haven’t been fiddling, there’s no obvious explanation, but broadband is not working :0(

Soooooo, I phoned my service provider.

First technician suggested something, it didn’t work and so said he couldn’t help.

I rung off, tried a couple of things and phoned again.

Next technician tried different things (funny there were other alternatives when the last person said that there wasn’t) and then said that they’d exhausted their possibilities and that the tcp/ip needed to be reset and I should phone the Legion of the Damned.

Sooooo, I phoned them to be told the OEM in the serial no. (or whatever) meant they needed to refer me to manufacturer.

I phoned the manufacturer, who told me I’d been given the wrong number for that problem and could I phone a different number.

So I phoned the different number and then spent about 5 minutes how to spell most of my address (which was rather frustrating) and then had a painfully slow person who didn’t seem to register me saying I’d done something 3 times (!)

Over an hour into this the doorbell rang and two men stood on the doorstop with my new fridge. It was 12pm. I had been told that delivery would be after 2pm. Of course I hadn’t emptied the existing fridge (which even thought it was broken we were still storing things in) or the freezer (which was still working) and I hadn’t shifted the pushchairs out of the hall, etc, etc. because I DID NOT EXPECT THEM FOR ANOTHER TWO HOURS.

Naturally they weren’t interested in this and informed me that my phone had been engaged for over an hour and they had attempted to phone me to notify me that delivery would be earlier than originally stated.

Sooooo, I tried to explain to the *technician* that I needed to go and could I possibly have some sort of reference number to call back with.

The technician didn’t appear to understand this, despite me explaining it a number of times.

I gave up and spent the next 10 minutes trying to talk to technician, type and empty the hall/fridge/freezer with help from my eldest whilst Erk kept Nin upstairs.

Old fridge was picked up, new fridge was installed and I was left free to continue with the now INCREDIBLY annoying phone call. It went on for some time before I finally managed to explain that I’m pregnant and really had to take a break to go to the loo. I managed to get a ref. number, phoned Kris in a panic for freezer space to store my defrosting food, narrowly avoided bursting into tears, made a cup of tea, had a biscuit, sat down and phoned back to try again.

To be told I need to do a system restore.

hmph

This computer is only a couple of months old and I haven’t done a back-up (wail). I know I should’ve done, but I haven’t and I haven’t got any spare CDs till I can get to a shop that sells them (and also remember to buy them). The technician didn’t appear to understand that I couldn’t do a system restore till I could back up my files, so, as politely as I could muster I said goodbye and hung up.

I think my midwife might have had something to say about my blood pressure at that point.

I decided that I honestly cannot cope with the stress of trying to get the problem fixed and decided to phone the service provider to cancel broadband and reinstate dial-up until I’m in a place of tranquility that can deal with the incredible patronised annoyance of bloody call-centre technicians when I have to spell basic words like ‘avenue’ and have to wait 5 mins despite saying repeatedly that I’ve either got to where they want me to go or that I know that the ’start’ button is in the lower left hand corner of my screen.

ggrrrrrrrrrrrr.

So I am on dial-up, which is slower, but for the time-being is avoiding any further stress (or possible breakdown) from dealing with the broadband problem.