Monday, 21 February 2011

How not to change your broadband provider

This may be my last blog post for a while. But given the activity over the last three weeks I doubt anybody would notice.

So, I after a dozen or so calls to various numbers, I eventually find somebody that thinks they are providing us with broadband and I ask them for a "Migration Authorisation Code code" (aka MAC code). It took about a week to get to this stage. (My favourite point was after I had been on transfered 4 times and been on hold for 35 minutes of my my 40 minute phone call, the lady puts me through to another department, an automated service answers the call says "Our offices are currently closed" and hangs up.) Anyhoo, when I finally get to talk to someone who has heard of me, they naturally say they will post it and email it to me. I should get it within 5 days. Fine.

After another couple of weeks I call them back to find out what is going on. The guy on the phone has no idea what is going on (naturally) and sends he will get a new MAC code sent out. Fair enough.

After another week, still no emails or letters. So I call them up again. This time the guy explains that the account has been closed for 3 weeks and doesn't understand how I am still getting broadband. After a bit of prodding he tells me where they sent the MAC code to, and it seems it was my old house that I haven't lived in for four years. Hmm... Not only that, but he can't give me a new MAC code as the account is closed.

So, it looks like we will be moving away from our current provider. (What with the account being closed and all) but we don't be able to do it with the brief outage a MAC code enables. We will have to do it old-skool, which means no internet for weeks.

Although competition had driven down broadband prices in Mordor, changing between providers was quite troublesome. As for the 3G reception on the slopes of Mt. Doom...

In other news I had forgotten about the foxy chicks in Wearing my Rolex - awesome.