Ceci n'est pas une blog.

When I first moved to France, FT managed to bollocks-up getting my phone line sorted out for more than a month... costing me four or five wasted half-days off work, sitting at home waiting (each time, no-one turned up!) and about 700 euros in phone costs on my Dutch mobile. You can read my complaint letter about that here.

Now, three years later, the same thing happens AGAIN! A summary:

We arrange to move the line to our new house... the lady convinces us to change to a package including VOIP and IPTV... we get a call back to say oops, those services aren't available at that address (remember this bit)... we take back all the equipment and re-state our wish to move the existing internet connection to the new address...

Two weeks pass - still no internet. (Also no caller-ID, which I switch on myself through their website.)

After calling two different helplines, we are told that the lady ("Joseine" from the Toulouse Esquirol agency, for anyone interested) DIDN'T submit the request for an ADSL connection at the new address after all! It will now be sorted out... after a week.

A few days pass - still no internet, and we leave for a holiday.

Two weeks later, we return from holiday expecting to finally empty our mailboxes of the hundreds of messages they've built up... BUT STILL NO INTERNET!!!

I call the helpline, the first guy is a COMPLETE MORON who insists on asking me questions about which version of Windows I'm using and what error message Internet Explorer gives me despite the fact that I repeatedly, vociferously and increasingly angrily tell him that I HAVE NO ADSL CONNECTION TO MY PHONE LINE! When he asks me to tell him "the number written on the socket", red mist descends and I pull the plug, to humour him, thereby disconnecting the call. There was no number on plug or socket, incidently.

After a brief cooling-off period, I wonder if I'd somehow got the wrong helpdesk and tried a different menu option... sorry sir, you should have chosen option one. Fine; another call and another person to help me. Nicer and less stupid but obviously a holiday worker since she keeps me on the line for ten minutes while asking around, before eventually telling me to call another helpline.

So I call this other helpline and FINALLY get someone who is intelligent enough to know what I'm talking about and nice enough to be apologetic and understanding. Thank you Mme Pons from Perpignon for actually going straight to the problem and telling me that all of this happened because... wait for it... the new address couldn't actually have ADSL at the speed my subscription specified - which should, of course, have been ringing alarm bells way back when they realised we couldn't have TV and VOIP... in fact it should have been noted when we first asked to change address!). Then each time this caused a problem, instead of quickly calling back or just connecting us and adjusting the subscription - THEY DID NOTHING AS USUAL.

So: all of this boils down to the usual crap of people in "customer services" saying they'll do something, not checking things properly, and then not doing ANYTHING AT ALL when things go wrong. EXACTLY THE SAME STORY AS THREE YEARS AGO!!!

ARRRGGGHH!!!

Did I mention that France Telecom is crap?