Telecom Woes
A telecom saga of increasing frustration, with a happy ending, eventually.
We bought the house in October 2008. At first we just relied on our mobiles and the internet at the hotel.
In January 2009 we requested a phone line. There had been one but it had been disconnected while the house was empty. We were provided with a box containing an internet modem, two very modern handsets and a charging base, a mobile phone and a promise of landline phone and internet within two months - the time Portugal says is the maximum you should have to wait for communications. Electricity and water are another matter. So are postal services but we've sort of given up on those.
It was getting quite expensive to use our mobiles - either the new one or our UK ones - especially for calls to the UK. We discussed mobile internet but decided against it because reception is iffy in the mountains, you are locked into an expensive contract for about 18 months in Portugal, and we both wanted access, every other month. Besides, we were only going to have to wait two months, weren't we?
When we visited again in March 2009 we went to the PT (Portuguese Telecom) agent in the next town but one to ask how things were progressing. We now had electricity and water and thought it wasn't unreasonable to expect telecommunications. They said they were working on it.
When we went back in late May they said they'd installed the line. They hadn't - they'd put a new wire to a pole beside our property, but it was hanging in loose coils, inevitable really as there was nobody in to let them do any installation.
But, they said, the engineers had signed the job off as finished and they knew that was true as there was now a phone number. If you rang it you got someone saying the line was not in use, and we pointed this out, fairly politely, and took a photograph of the coiled wires. These were sent to Head Office by the agency shop. We might have suggested that maybe they installed a phone line for the local wildlife but the sarcasm probably got lost in translation.
We started getting bills for the service we didn't have. This was complicated by the postal service which refused to believe our house was now inhabited and delivered our post either to a German guy who had been living in the village for ever and so must know all foreigners, or to another foreign family with a similar address (and similar erratic visiting habits) who passed the mail on to the German guy. He is maybe short sighted or something because instead of putting things in our mail box he threw them through the gate to be at the mercy of the elements and wildlife. Of course, he didn't have to do anything at all. He could have either ignored the whole thing or dumped it back in the lap of the post office. The post office in the village said that letters didn't come through them but from the post office in town and we should flag down the van driver and explain who we were... However, we were warned, there is a huge and frequent turnover in van drivers so this would be a constant activity.
We drove to the agency yet again and complained. Bear in mind that every time we had to take our files with our passports, fiscal numbers, proof of house ownership... The agency were by this time quite tired of us. Maybe not as tired as we were of them. We decided to hassle Head Office by phone but of course only had our mobiles. But you can only get free customer support via a landline... Even if the support you need is that your landline doesn't work.
We found a public phone in the village. As in most of Europe the increase in mobile use has meant fewer and fewer public phones. Still, it reduced our expenses considerably. We didn't need to use the mobile or drive to the agency. It wasn't exactly ideal and it was hard to balance the file and a dictionary in the booth, but it worked.
Each time we visited we phoned and each time we had to start the whole complaint process again including establishing that the line hadn't been installed in May and that we didn't actually owe them any money.
We emailed them from England. We made sure all emails were in English and Portuguese. We have Portuguese and Brazilian friends who check these things for us and are still our friends at the end of it all.
Head Office assured us of their unfailing consideration and asked why we hadn't paid the bills. And why we didn't phone them or email them while we were in Portugal so that their engineers could arrange to call to 'mend' the line we didn't have.
Then eventually they called and installed the line. They threatened to string the line across the balcony at head height and we countered by installing round the base of the balcony ourselves but didn't actually install the 'box' because if anything went wrong we would be liable and there would be no possibility of repair. They accepted our route for the line and installed the box, checked the line and went away. We tried to install the internet connection whereupon we lost the landline.
The email/phone call dance started all over again.
Some more engineers called and checked the line and vanished up the drive faster than you could say 'telecom'. Half way through installing the internet we lost the line again. This could all have been exacerbated by the hornets' nest in the study where the phone base station is to live.
The agency had other customers like us and gave up and severed all connection with the telecom people. That had already happened with the agency in our nearer town. That was probably due to a friend having similar problems and virtually camping on their doorstep for eighteen months - and that wasn't a language/availability problem because his wife is Portuguese and they live there permanently.
We did get a new handset and modem through the post, though the post office (who do deal with parcels) waited till they saw our builder and passed on the message that they had something for us and maybe we would like to call in next time we were around... The new equipment didn't help.
In January 2010 PT cut off the service we didn't have for non-payment of bills even though they had emailed to say that they knew we didn't owe them anything and had 'credited' our account. The department we phoned didn't know about the email.
In March they wouldn't talk to us because we weren't customers because we'd been cut off. You can probably imagine the emails and phone calls. And the blue air. And despite an extension number theoretically dedicated to foreigners like us with problems like ours we had to re-establish our credentials etc. every time and wait for someone who spoke English and of course this was on the mobile again (we were no longer officially customers and couldn't use the free landline service)and cost a lot!! I can't honestly blame them for not having English speakers available 24/7 but they could have refunded the cost of our mobile calls under the circumstances.
They started phoning us. It was a kind of improvement. At one point we were shouting talking to someone from Head Office at 10.00.p.m. on a Sunday evening. And the bills kept arriving, late, chewed, wet, etc. Addressed wrongly, too.
We had to request a new line because we'd been cut off even though we shouldn't have been... They even sent a new contract (to the wrong address) but we didn't sign it on the grounds that they should never have cut us off in the first place and we weren't accepting liability/further delay because of a new application with a new two month wait. They suggested they might have to 'virtually' remove the line and 'virtually' replace it... with virtual engineer logs all correctly dated etc.
In July 2010 another engineer called - one who spoke some English - and yes, we are learning Portuguese but it's a long way from ordering stuff in shops and restaurants to having a technical discussion - and established that there was nothing actually wrong with the phone but once you disconnected it to plug in the internet modem you had to plug it back till it clicked and then carry on pushing till it clicked again. We should obviously have known this and not worried about breaking the equipment and being blamed for the problems ourselves.
This was just before we went back to UK.
September - phone working though how you access messages remains a mystery because the instructions on setting it up are in rapid Portuguese.
No internet.
They said we should have requested internet when the phone was finally working. Our initial request had lapsed along with our phone line. How should we have known? The engineer should have told us.
Anyway, they took the request and said it would take about three days. After three days we phoned and they sent us to the internet branch of things. They said they had received the request - that morning - and it would now take another five days. Five days later we phoned and they said they'd phoned to confirm we now had internet - except it turned out they'd phoned another mobile number altogether so somebody somewhere thinks they have internet when perhaps they haven't.
Still no internet and they diagnosed a faulty modem. They wanted to post us a replacement but what with the post office and our imminent departure for UK we declined so they sent us to yet another town where they have both an agency and a depot. They directed us to the agency who in turn directed us to the depot who got very cross when we parked in their car park. However, we got the new modem. The guy who gave it to us was very dubious about whether it would work. They'd had, he said, a lot of problems.
It worked.
Internet established. Wi-fi established. Phone working. Direct debit set up to deal with bills. Yesterday we received a courtesy call (in England but on the 'Portuguese' mobile) to confirm that they'd removed the wrong mobile number from their records... It must have cost them the earth because they rabbited in Portuguese to Fledge, who answered the phone, for some time before light evidently dawned and they fetched someone who spoke English.
All is well, after 20 months. Now we can turn our attention to the mail delivery. Watch this space. We are also looking forward to the final stages of the saga of the shepherds and the grapes, which will be brought to you next week.
We bought the house in October 2008. At first we just relied on our mobiles and the internet at the hotel.
In January 2009 we requested a phone line. There had been one but it had been disconnected while the house was empty. We were provided with a box containing an internet modem, two very modern handsets and a charging base, a mobile phone and a promise of landline phone and internet within two months - the time Portugal says is the maximum you should have to wait for communications. Electricity and water are another matter. So are postal services but we've sort of given up on those.
It was getting quite expensive to use our mobiles - either the new one or our UK ones - especially for calls to the UK. We discussed mobile internet but decided against it because reception is iffy in the mountains, you are locked into an expensive contract for about 18 months in Portugal, and we both wanted access, every other month. Besides, we were only going to have to wait two months, weren't we?
When we visited again in March 2009 we went to the PT (Portuguese Telecom) agent in the next town but one to ask how things were progressing. We now had electricity and water and thought it wasn't unreasonable to expect telecommunications. They said they were working on it.
When we went back in late May they said they'd installed the line. They hadn't - they'd put a new wire to a pole beside our property, but it was hanging in loose coils, inevitable really as there was nobody in to let them do any installation.
But, they said, the engineers had signed the job off as finished and they knew that was true as there was now a phone number. If you rang it you got someone saying the line was not in use, and we pointed this out, fairly politely, and took a photograph of the coiled wires. These were sent to Head Office by the agency shop. We might have suggested that maybe they installed a phone line for the local wildlife but the sarcasm probably got lost in translation.
We started getting bills for the service we didn't have. This was complicated by the postal service which refused to believe our house was now inhabited and delivered our post either to a German guy who had been living in the village for ever and so must know all foreigners, or to another foreign family with a similar address (and similar erratic visiting habits) who passed the mail on to the German guy. He is maybe short sighted or something because instead of putting things in our mail box he threw them through the gate to be at the mercy of the elements and wildlife. Of course, he didn't have to do anything at all. He could have either ignored the whole thing or dumped it back in the lap of the post office. The post office in the village said that letters didn't come through them but from the post office in town and we should flag down the van driver and explain who we were... However, we were warned, there is a huge and frequent turnover in van drivers so this would be a constant activity.
We drove to the agency yet again and complained. Bear in mind that every time we had to take our files with our passports, fiscal numbers, proof of house ownership... The agency were by this time quite tired of us. Maybe not as tired as we were of them. We decided to hassle Head Office by phone but of course only had our mobiles. But you can only get free customer support via a landline... Even if the support you need is that your landline doesn't work.
We found a public phone in the village. As in most of Europe the increase in mobile use has meant fewer and fewer public phones. Still, it reduced our expenses considerably. We didn't need to use the mobile or drive to the agency. It wasn't exactly ideal and it was hard to balance the file and a dictionary in the booth, but it worked.
Each time we visited we phoned and each time we had to start the whole complaint process again including establishing that the line hadn't been installed in May and that we didn't actually owe them any money.
We emailed them from England. We made sure all emails were in English and Portuguese. We have Portuguese and Brazilian friends who check these things for us and are still our friends at the end of it all.
Head Office assured us of their unfailing consideration and asked why we hadn't paid the bills. And why we didn't phone them or email them while we were in Portugal so that their engineers could arrange to call to 'mend' the line we didn't have.
Then eventually they called and installed the line. They threatened to string the line across the balcony at head height and we countered by installing round the base of the balcony ourselves but didn't actually install the 'box' because if anything went wrong we would be liable and there would be no possibility of repair. They accepted our route for the line and installed the box, checked the line and went away. We tried to install the internet connection whereupon we lost the landline.
The email/phone call dance started all over again.
Some more engineers called and checked the line and vanished up the drive faster than you could say 'telecom'. Half way through installing the internet we lost the line again. This could all have been exacerbated by the hornets' nest in the study where the phone base station is to live.
The agency had other customers like us and gave up and severed all connection with the telecom people. That had already happened with the agency in our nearer town. That was probably due to a friend having similar problems and virtually camping on their doorstep for eighteen months - and that wasn't a language/availability problem because his wife is Portuguese and they live there permanently.
We did get a new handset and modem through the post, though the post office (who do deal with parcels) waited till they saw our builder and passed on the message that they had something for us and maybe we would like to call in next time we were around... The new equipment didn't help.
In January 2010 PT cut off the service we didn't have for non-payment of bills even though they had emailed to say that they knew we didn't owe them anything and had 'credited' our account. The department we phoned didn't know about the email.
In March they wouldn't talk to us because we weren't customers because we'd been cut off. You can probably imagine the emails and phone calls. And the blue air. And despite an extension number theoretically dedicated to foreigners like us with problems like ours we had to re-establish our credentials etc. every time and wait for someone who spoke English and of course this was on the mobile again (we were no longer officially customers and couldn't use the free landline service)and cost a lot!! I can't honestly blame them for not having English speakers available 24/7 but they could have refunded the cost of our mobile calls under the circumstances.
They started phoning us. It was a kind of improvement. At one point we were shouting talking to someone from Head Office at 10.00.p.m. on a Sunday evening. And the bills kept arriving, late, chewed, wet, etc. Addressed wrongly, too.
We had to request a new line because we'd been cut off even though we shouldn't have been... They even sent a new contract (to the wrong address) but we didn't sign it on the grounds that they should never have cut us off in the first place and we weren't accepting liability/further delay because of a new application with a new two month wait. They suggested they might have to 'virtually' remove the line and 'virtually' replace it... with virtual engineer logs all correctly dated etc.
In July 2010 another engineer called - one who spoke some English - and yes, we are learning Portuguese but it's a long way from ordering stuff in shops and restaurants to having a technical discussion - and established that there was nothing actually wrong with the phone but once you disconnected it to plug in the internet modem you had to plug it back till it clicked and then carry on pushing till it clicked again. We should obviously have known this and not worried about breaking the equipment and being blamed for the problems ourselves.
This was just before we went back to UK.
September - phone working though how you access messages remains a mystery because the instructions on setting it up are in rapid Portuguese.
No internet.
They said we should have requested internet when the phone was finally working. Our initial request had lapsed along with our phone line. How should we have known? The engineer should have told us.
Anyway, they took the request and said it would take about three days. After three days we phoned and they sent us to the internet branch of things. They said they had received the request - that morning - and it would now take another five days. Five days later we phoned and they said they'd phoned to confirm we now had internet - except it turned out they'd phoned another mobile number altogether so somebody somewhere thinks they have internet when perhaps they haven't.
Still no internet and they diagnosed a faulty modem. They wanted to post us a replacement but what with the post office and our imminent departure for UK we declined so they sent us to yet another town where they have both an agency and a depot. They directed us to the agency who in turn directed us to the depot who got very cross when we parked in their car park. However, we got the new modem. The guy who gave it to us was very dubious about whether it would work. They'd had, he said, a lot of problems.
It worked.
Internet established. Wi-fi established. Phone working. Direct debit set up to deal with bills. Yesterday we received a courtesy call (in England but on the 'Portuguese' mobile) to confirm that they'd removed the wrong mobile number from their records... It must have cost them the earth because they rabbited in Portuguese to Fledge, who answered the phone, for some time before light evidently dawned and they fetched someone who spoke English.
All is well, after 20 months. Now we can turn our attention to the mail delivery. Watch this space. We are also looking forward to the final stages of the saga of the shepherds and the grapes, which will be brought to you next week.