It all started innocently enough, or so it seemed at the time, with a call to my broadband provider last Friday to ask them to move us onto an unlimited broadband plan instead of the capped one we were currently on.
Didn't seem like a request that would cause any problems and indeed the lady I spoke to was happy to take the request and entered the order onto their system to effect the change.
The problems started when I spotted late that night that the order didn't seem to quite reflect what I had asked for. I was registered as a user of the "Infinity" broadband service which offers faster download rates than the base offering. I was hence expecting to remain as an Infinity customer but simply move onto unlimited broadband. The order however seemed to be moving me off the faster service and onto an unlimited service based on the slower broadband.
A call to their call centre on Saturday thus took place and I was told that there did indeed seem to be a mistake on the order and that it needed to be cancelled and I would have to phone back today to get it resubmitted.
Well that got us to today and a series of phone calls that burnt through a good sized chunk of my day.
Bottom line seems to be that I have now been moved onto an unlimited broadband package but not on the super fast broadband service - because it is not available yet in my area!! Given that my bills for the last 8 months have stated that I was buying their faster Infinity service it is safe to say this explanation did come as something of a surprise to me. I does though explain the events of the last few days. It's all been referred on to another department to take a look into what has happened and sort it all out - so I can no doubt look forward to some more calls in the coming days.
All very strange but hopefully all will become clearer when they do the investigation.
On the plus side I should note that all of the people I have dealt with on the various calls about this to the helpline have come across as competent and pleasant to talk with - no small achievement I suspect given the problems I'm sure they get to deal with every day.
On the less positive side a call to the technical helpline regarding a problem accessing the internet security software that should come with the broadband service led to a 30 min phone call where they were unable to diagnose what was causing the issue. They have helpfully escalated it to the next level of support to take a look at but sadly they operate on a model of calling the user at a time of their convenience which in my case it seems won't be until next Friday ! Not what I'd call a timely response.
Not wanting to finish on a negative I'll just add that the various calls ended with enough daylight left for me to head out into the darkening countryside and find the last of the goecaches in my 2012 challenge to find all of the ones within 5 miles of my house. There are a couple where I have had to log "did not find" records but in both cases I am in good company with others similarly logging problems so I suspect they are no longer to be found and that's good enough for me to claim success on my challenge - and all done with a whole day to spare before the year is out. Time to start thinking what to aim for in 2013.
