postscript to yesterday's tale of tribulation

this is a postscript to yesterday's post (avoiding an incompetence premium rate call)

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As the tracking page for my delivery (via Interlink Express) continued to display the unable to deliver etc. … call #..... to rearrange delivery message, throughout the day and into the evening, I began to think that my telephonic communication had been totally ignored.

When my beloved returned home from work, in the evening, she found an unable to deliver (as no one had been in) note attached to the outside of the external porch chez-nous. Why it was attached there only the driver knows as there is a letterbox on the external porch and on the main door into the house. Adjacent to the door is one of these new-fangled contraptions, namely a door-bell, the access to which is not restricted, as the door of the external porch is always open!

By this time I was feeling despairingly pissed off, emotionally and physically drained. We have numerous packages delivered each year and, with this one exception, the delivery person has been capable of entering the porch and either ringing the doorbell or knocking on the house door!

The message on the tracking page, by this morning, informed me that the package had been delivered to the local depot. As soon as the office opened at 8.00am my beloved phoned them to ask when we could expect delivery and was informed that it was in the process of being loaded and scanned then, after a further hour during which the status remained unchanged ma belle called them again only to be informed that it could be anytime up until 10.00am before the van was fully loaded! [Thoughts of the Tardis ran through my mind – an ever expanding chamber materializing within the confines of a transit van].

By some miracle, no doubt unaffected by our pestering calls, a couple of minutes later the delivery time (10.18 – 11.18) had been posted on the tracking board! This time the delivery went smoothly! By about 10.35 the parcel was received and duly signed for.

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Shortly afterwards a Royal Mail delivery brought us the item which had been omitted from yesterday’s parcel. … and they all lived happily ever after ….  

A VIRGIN FAILS to provide a service

Sunday 16 December

ISP’s, who’d have ‘em; on the other hand, how would we manage without ‘em? Yesterday the connections were very slow, today zilch! So I phone the Virgin Media service status line, thankfully a Freephone number, only to discover that the “connections are slow” in all our adjacent postal areas, as well as here, but “our engineers are aware of the problem and are in the process of repairing it!” I’m rather suspicious; if they’re only aware that connections are slow, rather than non-existent, are they really on the ball at all?

It’s quite a while since we had a major problem with NTL / Virgin Media (remembering the company before it became a Virgin) but, it still makes for a very frustrating time. The web has been a major lifeline for me, via various forums, blogs and networking sites I’ve managed to retain a ‘virtual’ social life, much richer than the ‘real’ one which is rather limited owing to health restraints.

Trouble is, one hears of nightmare scenarios with many different ISPs so, is it really worth jumping out of the current frying pan?

Monday 17 December

Still no internet connection, good old reliable Virgin Media, so by 1.30pm decide to check once more with lack of service line; at least this time the recorded voice is rather more honest and states that this area is suffering from a “loss of service” and, their engineers are aware of the issue.

That’s little consolation, what I want is for them to do something about it! As Karl Marx said all those years ago, “Philosophers have interpreted the world, our task is to change it” but now, our ISP having failed to change failure into function, we’re back to a more metaphysical problem, namely ‘creatio ex nihilo’. Is it really possible that this company (the beloved Virgin Media) can get their fingers out and create a service out of a vacuum? Their apologies for the inconvenience are insufficient; we pay real money for their product and expect to receive that product in exchange for that cash. A service industry that fails to deliver deserves to go to the wall.

We will certainly be considering a change of ISP!

At this season, when all around us churches proclaim a Virgin birth, I feel that another miracle is required in which a Virgin starts to provide a decent service.

3.50pm – I offer up my prayer of thanksgiving. A Virgin conceived a way to restore our internet connection. The age of miracles has not yet passed.

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A further posting for today, Of Leon ...and other problems, can be found on 'Mal's Murmurings'.