Wot? No Broadband!

I never knew how much I relied on Broadband connections until I lost mine last week and am still without it now.

I spoke over the telephone to one of those call centres from abroad.  Now, I’ve nothing against those who speak with an Indian accent just as long as I an understand them.
I was finding it awfully difficult to communicate the guy at the other end simply because his accent was so strong. 

Obviously mine was too because he kept asking me to repeat what I’d just said and also ‘misheard’ several points.

Understanding your words is one thing but understanding exactly what you mean is a difficult task for someone who’s never lived in UK and understands our way of putting things, language wise.

Anyway, it was a Monday evening in the UK, about five minutes to midnight when I finally decided to call Virgin Media about my intermittent Broadband connection.
I’d be happily downloading files when I would notice that the little green line had stopped moving.  This kept happening and so I eventually called support.
After finally understanding my problem, we had a call booked in for an engineer to visit my home and fix the Internet connection.
Friday morning was the earliest that he could manage. 

Five days of ‘now you see me, now you don’t’ broadband is not funny.

Thursday evening it switched off altogether, totally dead.

Friday morning the engineer didn’t turn up.

Obviously, the Indian guy did not understand my problem or he didn’t understand how to book an engineer properly, one or the other, probably both.

Anyway, I called Virgin Media support once more enquiring as to where the engineer was.  ‘There was no engineer visit booked in for you at all sir’ was the reply to my enquiry.
The following Tuesday was the only available slot for the next attempt.  Could I stand four days without the Internet?  I had to  as it was what we  in the UK call a Bank Holiday and nobody calls to repair a broadband fault over this period.

Come Tuesday, the Virgin Media engineer called at 8am sharp.  Rubbing by eyes and adjusting my dressing gown, I let him in.

He repaired the fault immediately as he knew what the cause was.  It was the green box.

Outside of my home is a metal green box with all the connections of my neighbours who were also on cable TV, broadband or telephone.

Apparently my connection, known as a Siamese board (as it has two parts) had been unplugged from inside this green box and moved to a lower location.

The connections are supposed to be made in a certain configuration in order for the voltage to be uniformly distributed to each connection, however, the ‘contracted in’ engineers don’t subscribe to this method of connection and simply plug both boards into ANY available slot.

This may well mean moving my broadband board to a lower position in the cabinet and this is what causes my broadband to either be intermittent or not work at all.
It NEEDS to be in position number TWO at the top of the cabinet.

The engineer explained that every time another household in the street get a problem, their boards get moved into a different location which, in turn, means moving someone else’s.  This, more often than not, cures the problem …. for a short while.

The contracted in engineer can book the job as completed and book off home early.

Then, after a few days, the problem arises on the other person’s connection.  And so it goes on.

And on.

Nearly all call-outs come down to simply moving someone’s connection to another slot in the green cabinet. 

What’s the answer?  The engineer said, ‘Every time you see a Virgin Media van outside with someone messing with the green box, go out and tell them NOT to move your card out of slot two, otherwise the same thing will happen over again’.

Great, there am I paying a premium price for 50mb broadband and I have to stand guard outside of my house just in case some unscrupulous engineer wants to perform a quick fix and slide off home early.

British workmen, ‘eh?  I bet they don’t get this trouble in India.