Categories: uncategorized
Date: 21 December 2005 08:51:55
On Friday I had a hospital appointment, but that's not the topic of today's blog. After the appointment, I went home to gather up a few things and pick up hubby to go down to Swansea.
We had a burger king lunch on the way out, and also stopped at ASDA in Merthyr to pick up a few bits. Even having made two stops, we got there in good time. It was lovely to stop in and see friends of ours and their two little boys aged 1 and 3, one of whom is mr moog's Godson.
Then we went over to stay with blonde. We did a bit of catching up with Baby Blonde, who was in a very good mood, then managed a glass of wine before mr moog went off into town for his 'christmas do'. Blonde and I sat around chatting and catching up over wine and pringles. We were so busy nattering that we never got around to cooking and eating anything proper - sorry B, I am not a good influence on you - I should really have been helping ensure that you had proper sustenance... Mr moog didn't get in until very late, and was quite worse for wear in the morning. We all had breakfast together before blonde and baby blonde went off to nativity rehearsal.
In the mean time, mr moog and I tried to sort out blonde's webspace. We weren't able to ftp to the site. Now, as Blonde has had problems previously with her telephone company, mr moog is named on the account so that he can discuss technical issues on her behalf. Customer services (on a freephone number) were very polite and told mr moog to discuss the technical problem with technical help (on a paying number). Technical help were completely useless.
'I can't seem to ftp to your site to upload my webpages'
'I see sir. You're having trouble downloading from the internet?'
... and so it went on.
After about 10 minutes, the guy on the other end of the line was starting to get the gist of the problem and asked about security (passwords, etc.). Came to the conclusion that mr moog is not in fact the named account holder, and refused to do anything for him. Then ensued the inevitable
'I am named on the account and have been for quite some time'
'You'll have to ring customer services so that it can be verified'
'I rang them first, and they gave me your number'
.... Which ended in mr moog demanding to talk to the manager, and being put on hold for the better part of 20 minutes.
In the end, the technical support guy couldn't sort out the problem and had to pass mr moog onto someone with some technical experience. They managed to figure out that there was a problem with the activation of the account, which is why the ftp server was closing the connection every time we tried to log in. The phone call to technical support was 53 minutes. I am hoping to hear next month from Blonde that her telephone company have not charged her for the call (being as 1) it was their fault that the account didn't work and 2) The phone call was significantly prolongued due to the incompetence of their own staff).
It seems completely bizarre to me that said telephone company cannot manage to have a system whereby the different departments can see the same account information about customers ie the fact that an account holder has a third party named on the account. Seems to happen a lot though...
Anyway, the four of us had an absolutely gorgeous lunch at Verdi's and a little walk down the beach. I do miss it.....
On the way back to Brum we went to see our friend from university, mr swirly (don't ask!). It was good to catch up and exchange presents. Shame that with certain things the fact that they are well wrapped doesn't do a lot to disguise the content. :o)