Another Telefonica Tale

We've been waiting for a phone for 2 years now and in July Telefonica finally turned up on the doorstep.  My wife was in raptures and was just about to invite the engineer to tea when he announced in pigeon English  "ees impossibley".  My wife asked why and he said "No cable".  "We could have told you that", she said, "that's what we've been waiting for, for you to come and lay one".  With a shrug of the shoulders he went away and we thought that was that.

Shortly after my wife was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer  and after a huge operation she is now on her 5th chemo session.  The point is that now it is even more imperative that we are able to contact our family, friends and doctors, but without a landline it is just too expensive by mobile for both, us, and any callers.  But a very nice friend and colleague at work said she would get on to Telefonica and badger them until they did something.  Sure enough they turned up one day in October.  However, my wife rang me at work on her mobile to say he had come to install the internet and knew nothing about the phone.  I decided to go ahead as at least we would have email and MSN and possibly Skype.  I asked her to make sure that he told her how it worked.  When I got home there was the router and about 5 miles of wiring and 2 holes in the wall.  I asked my wife why is there 2 holes and she said he stopped drilling the first one after a couple of minutes and started another!!!!  He had told her that all I do is plug the wire in to the computer to make it work, so I did.  Guess what?  Yep, nothing worked, dead as a dodo.  So I thought I'd check what he had done with the wireless receiver on the roof terrace and followed the wire out of the 2nd hole and up the stairs to the roof.  At the top of the stairs the wire ran along the top of the wall, but as the chimney was on the other side of the terrace I looked to see where the dish was.  It wasn't there.  I again followed the wire.  It went along the parting wall between me and my neighbour, down his side, around the wire securing his barbeque, up his chimney and there was my dish next to his on top of his chimney.  I was gobsmacked.  Not only had he not got anyone's permission to do it, but he had actually tresspassed on my neighbours property to do it.  Fortunately, we have lovely neighbours and they weren't angry but I promised I would get it moved.  When my friend rang Telefonica they said why didn't someone tell him where to put the dish and anyway they had no record of an engineer being called to my address so it's not their problem.  My friend said so you won't be charging them for it?  The reply was that they would start the order all over again and start from scratch.  So we are still waiting. How does that company make money? 

An incredible story.

The engineers are obviously not paid to think!!!!!

OR

they have nothing to think with!

I hope that your wife is doing O.K. and that you do soon have a landline.

Sorry to hear that you are having such an awful time with Telefonica, especially under the circumstances.

It just goes to show it must be down to the person you talk to on the end of the phone!

We asked a very good Spanish friend of ours to phone 1004 for us and order our telephone land line connection and internet services. We gave her our Bank Acc details, NIE's etc and she rang them on a Monday morning. Thursday morning of that very same week, just four days later, the engineer rang me on my mobile to tell me he was in the area and could he come and do the work!!!

After about two hours he was done, tested the telephone line and the internet service, showed me the results, even plugged in the phone we had purchased from Carrefour the day before and made sure that was working. Then showed me the instuctions for using the router he had puit in, and explained in very good English.

Again, I think it's who you speak to and who they send out. This guy was older than me, however was the same type of person in that he was very proud of his work.

Hope you get everything sorted out.

Thanks TechNoApe.  The main problem is due to the fact that Telefonica didn't lay a cable when the urbanisations were being built.  All the sockets are there in the house, one in each room but there is no cable at the end of them.  The phone I brought with us from the UK has been on charge now for 2 years!  This is why we chose the WiiFi option, thinking that we would at least have something.  Even our administrators have tried to help but in the end they sent me an email saying that they had completely given up with Telefonica as they couldn't get anywhere with them.