Telephones can be frustrating….

Promises, Promises -

In Spain you have less choice of phone providers, at least with land lines, due to the monopoly held by Telefonica, who do not display the best customer services in the world. You may not even be able to have a land line…particularly if you moved into a new house, like me, and was promised one within 3 months, by Telefonica.

Desperate Measures -

The problem is, although they put in the cables and your house is pre-wired, they can’t be bothered to activate the lines until most of the houses are occupied and they get their dosh. 12 months later and after a wi-fi system that put everybody off from telephoning us, we have reverted to a mobile based system, albeit with a normal looking handset. So, you do have choices, but they are usually made in desperation in this type of scenario. STOP PRESS, This company is now taking money out of our bank for our free calls and won’t send us a bill. Won’t reply to our phone calls either. Telefonica laying pipes in road, rumoured to be for our new telephone line! Hope so.

A brighter future?

Not wanting to be all gloom and doom, lots of people in established and not too isolated homes benefit from the wonderful Telefonica service albeit with their sometimes, “don’t give a s**t ” mentality. Most of the time your phone works and your bills are correct, not forgetting that in Spain they take the money out of your bank first and then send you the bill. Nice work if you can get it. Understanding the bills for telephones and other utilities can however, be a bit daunting for newcomers, so back to our friends at Age Concern Espana, who do some good translations for you.

Shpeak up Pleash

My previous “rustic” house, about 10 miles inland had few problems with TF service, but due to the ornate exchange, we couldn’t have broadband (which is a sin).

Now in an “urbansation,” we have broadband, but by wi-fi, which works most of the time, but with varying degrees of success.

With our package came two phone lines, one we used for business and one private. Forget it! The delay in you getting to talk to your clients and friends, usually results in them hanging up and we suddenly developed speech impediments, i.e. rather noticeable lisps, in addition to finger fatigue, as it usually took about six dialing attempts to get a line. As we also have an 0845 number in the UK, which was inoperable, this was getting really annoying.

A Rose by Any Other Name-

Now we have resorted to the mobile system, which is a lot better, but quite expensive, particularly as we don’t really want to change internet providers, with the usual hassles and changes. So we now have two separate systems, but have kept the wi-fi telephone as well just for laughs or “lol” as the text people say. Ho Hum.

One day we will get a land line and will celebrate with a bottle of champagne, or in my case a large cup of PG Tips. If it’s good enough for monkeys, it’s good enough for me.

As usual, your comments and recommendations would be very useful, but we need to know about the good things as well as the bad…….

Mike(partially disconnected)Pick

PS- The internet went off at 10pm last night and has been on and off for 12 hours.

Tags: internet, mobiles, Telefonica, telephones, wi-fi