Irritable Rant

Ah, splendid -- it seems I can post to the blog from work. I never used to be able to do that -- I.T. must have reconfigured the firewall.

So, let me tell you about my broadband connection.

It isn't, not to put too fine a point on it, bloody working. Or rather, the connection itself is working fine (as I've discovered by lugging the PC and monitor downstairs to the living-room and plugging them in manually) but I can't get the bloody wireless connector to work for love, money or chocolate.

Despite appearances, this is the fault of the providers, at least partially. When their engineer came to install the connection, he advised us that our best option was to have him install the cable modem in the living-room (downstairs, front), rather than in the study (upstairs, back), and to use a wireless router to connect the two. It would, he said, be easy enough.

Like a fool, I assumed he was a professional whose advice could be trusted. In fact -- as every other employee of the company to whom I've since spoken has agreed -- he was fobbing us off in order to get out of doing an awkward, time-consuming job. (It turns out, in fact, that according to company policy if he wasn't able to make the connection directly he should have ordered and installed the wireless equipment himself.)

He probably assumed I had the technical competence to install a router effectively, and would never be any the wiser. Boy, did he pick the wrong person to tangle with there.

Since then -- following a handful of protracted conversations with technical support and customer services -- I've wasted Monday morning waiting for a visit from an engineer who was supposed to finish the installation free of charge, only to find that they'd sent out a service engineer instead of an installation engineer. Now we have to wait until Saturday for the proper engineers to visit, and in the meantime I can't email anyone or access the web, except from work. (I have a nasty feeling this won't be sorted out come the weekend either, but perhaps that's just my paranoia speaking.)

I am officially Unimpressed by this performance, and will be contacting the company's complaints department once all this is over.

Thank you for listening.