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  • Re: We value your privacy

    From Aidan Kehoe@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jun 28 08:28:53 2024
    XPost: alt.usage.english

    Ar an seachtú lá is fiche de mí Meitheamh, scríobh Athel Cornish-Bowden:

    [...] Our dishwasher has a problem that I think may be minor, but anyway should be covered by the extended guarantee (7 years). It's no longer possible to phone the specific shop for after-sales service (not without knowing a secret phone number, anyway). So you have to phone a number that applies to the whole of France. That takes you to someone in Africa who knows nothing about the model or the Marseilles shop. He didn't seem to understand our French (or that of our concierge, who is a native French speaker, and also tried to talk to him). His own French wasn't at all good either. For that reason I don't think he was in Morocco or Tunisia, but somewhere further south.

    Our home broadband was cut off a couple of weeks ago; it’s under our landlord’s
    name with Vodafone, and he never set up a direct debit or anything of the sort, so it was in arrears. The phone customer service experience was horrendous, just nothing joined-up (we’ve nothing better in English to render German »konsequent« in this meaning), they didn’t seem to be making any notes of previous phone calls, despite my repeatedly being added as an authorised contact they refused to discuss the connection with me, throwing money at the problem made no difference. The English comprehension was fine, but the whole experience was a more severe example of the sort of obstructionist aversion to doing the job they are paid for that I have dealt with in doctor colleagues from that general part of the world.

    My other half was tolerating the lack of internet and phone poorly (we have no mobile phone reception so hotspotting from a mobile does not work) and her mood noticeably lifted when we got Starlink working yesterday evening.

    An advantage to being Polish or Hungarian at this point; not practical to outsource phone support to the third world. It’s unusual to have lack of widespread comprehension of one’s language be a relative advantage in one’s quality of life, I can’t quickly think of another instance of this.

    --
    ‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
    How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
    (C. Moore)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Hibou@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jul 2 08:23:52 2024
    XPost: alt.usage.english

    Le 28/06/2024 à 08:28, Aidan Kehoe a écrit :

    Our home broadband was cut off a couple of weeks ago; it’s under our landlord’s
    name with Vodafone, and he never set up a direct debit or anything of the sort,
    so it was in arrears. The phone customer service experience was horrendous, just nothing joined-up (we’ve nothing better in English to render German »konsequent« in this meaning), they didn’t seem to be making any notes of previous phone calls, despite my repeatedly being added as an authorised contact they refused to discuss the connection with me, throwing money at the problem made no difference. The English comprehension was fine, but the whole experience was a more severe example of the sort of obstructionist aversion to
    doing the job they are paid for that I have dealt with in doctor colleagues from that general part of the world.

    My other half was tolerating the lack of internet and phone poorly (we have no
    mobile phone reception so hotspotting from a mobile does not work) and her mood
    noticeably lifted when we got Starlink working yesterday evening.

    An advantage to being Polish or Hungarian at this point; not practical to outsource phone support to the third world. It’s unusual to have lack of widespread comprehension of one’s language be a relative advantage in one’s
    quality of life, I can’t quickly think of another instance of this.

    I'm glad you've found a solution.

    We often stay in French gîtes, where the Internet is a lottery. Fibre
    has now been laid to most of them, but they are not always connected to
    it. If the owners are close by, the wi-fi is often piggy-backed off
    theirs, and can be erratic. Mobile coverage is often weak, but if the
    not-spot is not too notty, moving the phone about, e.g. parking it
    outside on a windowsill, can allow hot-spotting. And, of course, since
    we're roaming, the phones have a choice of at least three French
    networks (Orange, SFR, and Bouygues - but not Free, I think).

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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