Jo Green

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By Jo Green - Mon 14th Mar 2011

 

I know a lot has already been written about Telefonica - significantly, how they are a bunch of incompetent, thieving and lying idiots, however, I felt that I needed to blow off a little bit of steam and add my feelings into the pot of festering communal hatred.

Firstly, we have Telefonica - landline and ADSL and pay the extortionate fee of about 39.99 for ADSL, Plus about 12.99 For Land Line, Plus Calls, Plus IVA , which means that all in all, the monthly factura is rarely less that 80 Euros.

For that I get the giddy heights of 1meg.

Because I live 'rural' I can't get anything any more.

And it pains me enormously whenever I watch UK TV to see how Virgin, or BT or whoever offer 20meg Fibre optic ADSL, plus a landline, plus 50 Channels of TV, plus a Mobile with unlimited usage, plus a small family hatchback, for around 20 Quid or whatever (maybe I'm stretching a point, but you get the idea...)

So yesterday, after 24 hours of intermittent service with the ADSL flicking on and off, I didn't feel any guilt about calling them up and demanding that they did something about it. My OH works from home so it's an important thing for us, and as I had only recently sorted the exact same issue out at my work, I felt confident in tackling the same problem at home and volunteered to do the job.

16.40pm : Called Telefonica Customer Services - Although I speak some Spanish, with a technical matter like this I prefer to speak in English. Waited 5 mins on hold to speak with an English speaking operator, to be told that I needed to speak to 'Technical Services'. They couldn't (or wouldn't) transfer me, and instead gave me the number so I could call myself.

16.55pm : After holding for what seemed an aon, I finally got to speak to a technical engineer. He didn't speak English and told me that neither did any of his colleagues (How odd ! - Telefonica provide seemingly hundreds of 'New Client' English speakers to sell you a service, but NONE to help existing clients with technical problems). I struggled to explain what the problem was in Spanish, and he confessed that he didn't know much about ADSL and shuffled off to find a colleague that did.

17.05pm : A second 'technical services engineer' (For the sake of being polite I'll let that term stand for now) came on the line and asked me to repeat the whole sorry tale - that the ADSL kept coming on and off, that the lights on the router flashed like a christmas tree, but that we had a continuous land line connection - could he test the ADSL on the line please ? - Apparently not - We needed to contact customer services to better explain ourselves in English. But Customer services don't deal with technical problems..... you see where this is going ?

17.10pm : Finally a third Engineer came to the phone and told me to unplug the router and then plug it in again. This, I was assured, would re-set the connection. I had already done this countless times, together with checking that the fault was with the router by changing it with the spare, and by changing the ADSL filter - the problem was with the line, I was sure I explained...

17.20pm : After relenting and agreeing to unplug the router, leave it a minute and restart it as requested, I returned to the phone to find that the engineer had hung up.

And as such I resigned myself to the fact that I had wasted a half-hour, got no answers to my problem and satisfied myself that Telefonica simply did not care. Yes, the procedure did work, but equally so it worked earlier on in the day ( four times ! ) that my OH had done the exact same thing. We didn't need to know how to re-set a router, we wished to know A) What the problem was? B) Were they aware of it? C) Was something being done about it? D) How long it would last for?

Answers that we never got.

And so far today the connection has dropped out just the twice.

God bless you Telefonica, and thankyou for you untiring pursuit of excellent customer service - you are worth every penny of your record 10.17 Billion Euros profit that you reported you gained for the whole of 2010. I am only saddened that it was an paltry 32% Increase on last year's profits when you so clearly deserve so much more....