A day off work to do lots of work
OK a day off to do lots of work.
BT Engineer booked in for a morning visit to fix Sky Broadband problem – check.
Thermal Store to be delivered on an AM delivery after two weeks of it falling off fork lifts and being un-delivered as my main contact had knackered his ribs – check.
Plumber didn’t reply to texts – uncheck.
Window people couldn’t come out despite me bothering them all week – uncheck.
Insurance assessor can’t get over today to look at the roof as they’re too busy with all the claims – uncheck.
Well two out of the five I had planned wasn’t bad, I would however have preferred the full five.
Anyway BT and Sky, cue Benny Hill music….
BT van seen slowing down outside the front of the house, BT van does a U-turn and again slows down then accelerates into the distance. Hmmmm that’s not good is it. At midday it’s dawning on me that they’re not coming, in fact I start getting suspicious that the engineer might have slowed down to photograph the front of my house under the pretence that he’d visited and he had photographic evidence to prove it, now that’s just me being paranoid isn’t it.
Anyway for a change I get through to Sky immediately and this time I get Greg. Now for a change I’m a bit irate, I’ve found the being nice isn’t proving very successful. Anyway my Mr. Nasty isn’t so nasty but I do get my point across that I’m not happy that I’ve again taken a day off to meet a non-existent BT engineer, the irony being that if I wasn’t in BT would charge me for he call out.
Greg informs me that I’m no longer a Broadband customer, which we’d already established with Barry earlier this week and that as such they couldn’t have booked a BT engineer. I explained that I knew all this as I’d already been through this with Barry and that Barry had somehow managed to book me an engineer for this morning, the engineer having done a runner or been invisible.
Greg then informed me that the engineer wasn’t coming or that he hadn’t been booked as I wasn’t a broadband customer and the best they could do was book me in for a new broadband connection, this would take up to 14 days rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Anyway things got a little more heated before it all calmed down and I explained the difficulties I had with BT not turning up, with being on the phone so much to Sky (I now sport a headset… it has prompted me to buy one), how the calls always seem to start with me having to start from scratch and then end up with nothing really being resolved. Anyway Greg and I get chatting and he does a bit of fiddling and announces that he’s managed to do something that’ll allow me an incredible 5Mb/sec, gasp. I express my thanks but on resetting the router nothing seems to happen and my usually white smiley face is a rather blushing amber face. Greg reassures me that the work he’s done will take an hour to kick in so we wish each other farewell and that should be that. Call duration around 40 minutes.
Four hours of orange smiley face later and I ring Sky again and get the rather excellent Paul. Paul I spoke to a few weeks back and he remembers my circumstances. A bit of explaining and he’s on the ball, finding out everything that everyone else has found out and basically now finding more loops to jump through as the exchange is refusing to answer to his remote requests. Again another 20 to 30 minutes of my life gone and Paul explains that he’ll have to get someone else to look at the call and they’ll give me a ring later in the evening.
Come the evening Simon rings from “Sky Order Recovery” and explains that it’ll be three working days before I have the line up and running again. He’s very reassuring and a quite frugal 15 or so minutes on the phone. Still it doesn’t get my wasted day back, it means I’m off line all weekend and I wonder if once they finish this work that I’ll be back to square one with the problems solving starting again.
Anyway at least I have my wonderful thermal store being delivered today on an AM delivery.
Seems as though the BT man must be delivering the store as by 12 it still hadn’t shown.
Patience gone now I sent what could only be described as an uncharacteristically irked email to the wonderful Matt at HTG.
Wandering back downstairs after the email had been sent and there’s the lorry at 1pm. A bit late buy hey ho I can get in touch with Matt and put things right later.
Beggaring belief the lorry arrives with one person, the rather unimpressive driver, one bloke to lift the rather enormous thermal store into my home. I offer my help and after removing all the packaging, balancing it precariously on a palette barrow and some huffing and puffing we get it through the front door and into the house. We so nearly lost it in the wind a couple of times and I cannot vouch for it being in perfect condition as we had to walk it into the house.
Anyway wonderful fantastic, rather steampunk, thermal store in the house and I endeavour to get in touch with Matt to put things right and ooops no internet.
Anyway later that afternoon a knock at the door and it’s Ray the builder’s grandson with an estimate for the work they’re going to do.
I beckon him in to look at the store and he goes out and gets Ray out of the car.
We have a quick shufty in the attic (Ray reckons that there’s more to the job than we first thought as someone seems to have taken a large notch out of the supporting beam) and he suggests ways to tackle it. He also suggests a good plumber to plumb in the store.
Sooo Ray and Grandson, dix points.
Sky, BT and HTG, nil points.
The store is pretty fantastic though, HTG huit points.