So, the Sky engineer, or a sub-contractor for their, erm, sub-contractor, turned up at our next-door neighbour’s house first thing on Tuesday. Our next-door neighbour told her that their other neighbour was also experiencing total loss of connectivity as well as us. Well, she put 2 and 2 together and thought, hang on a minute. That’s 3 people who live within feet of each other who have all completely lost all of their internet, their telephone and their television…Methinks there may be something more serious afoot…
Honestly, it took a woman engineer to work this out. Say no more, eh?
And, of course, I’d already told them several times that the installation engineers must have done something for us all to suddenly lose everything.
But, she pootled round to us ahead of her time slot just to confirm for herself that yes, we had the exact same issue as next door. She asked if there had been any roadworks recently. She showed me – SHOWED ME – on her little screen that the engineer on Friday HAD escalated our fault on Friday, just like he said he had, and just as he had right in front of us. And she escalated it again but warned it could still take up to 72 working hours for something to be done about it.
Well, as soon as she’d gone I was back on the (mobile) phone again and this time the lady I spoke to (yes, another woman) recited back to me everything that had happened on our account since a week ago last Sunday, when our phone first went on the blink. She informed me that Friday’s engineer had escalated the fault on Friday. She confirmed that Tuesday’s engineer had also escalated the call on Tuesday. And she even checked with the sub-contractor that they had the call via a little portal she had access to.
They had not only received the call, they were working on tracing the problem. And in the time it took for this lady to restore my faith in customer-facing staff, the sub-contractor had identified the fault. It was a mains issue, i.e. either a power supply had been cut or the copper cables to our houses had been cut. She also conceded that it was possible a plug had been taken out and either plugged back in to the wrong hole or been left dangling.
She apologised profusely but explained that as this was an ‘external’ fault, there was nothing more Sky could do at this stage other than keep an eye on the sub-contractor. They’d given a date, though: Thursday 28 August. But she asked that we wait until Sunday 31 August as it could take longer if the problem was more complicated than they anticipated.
Thursday wasn’t really very good for me, let alone Sunday. But if the cables have been cut, there’s not a lot any of us can do about it. Unless I ring them up and demand they give us full fibre underground free of charge now, which I still may. Especially as I now know that at least 2 of the houses affected were recently given underground full fibre free of charge by Sky. (The installation is free of charge, not the line rental, etc.)
I spent all of Tuesday either with this or on workarounds. I managed to get online a couple of times via the rubbish mobile hotspot, but it really was very patchy and unstable. So I resigned myself to offline working for the rest of Tuesday.
I’d sorted out a mostly offline working schedule for Wednesday and had started that when the doorbell went. It was another sub-contractor, but this time a sub-contractor for the line owners, BT, and not the line renters, Sky. He seemed to think it was just us who were affected and he started to go through his spiel, until I told him there were now at least 6 of us in the village with complete loss of connectivity. Straight away he asked if there had been any work in the village, and I told him that yes, our roads have been up for much of the summer and that the last trench was filled in on Friday morning, just about when all of our internets went down.
He did a quick line test and confirmed what everyone else had already confirmed: there was an outside fault. Then he did another test to see how far away the fault was because he’d already checked the main exchange cabinet and all was working well there. The problem was 82m away from our house and he walked around to have a look to see what might have happened. He was back within minutes, having taken photographs and everything.
The road adjacent to our closest telegraph pole had recently been dug up and filled in and there were new ironworks, exactly at the spot where he detected the fault. He deduced, therefore, that the installation guys on Friday had clearly done something.
Well, duh!
I told him I’d already told everyone I’d spoken to that this was probably the case, but he said they won’t take the word of a customer. Perhaps they should, and then perhaps that would save them time, effort, money, and egg on their face in the long run. Again he apologised but said the contractor who’d hired him would have to go back to the line owner who would have to somehow get in touch with the new installation company who would then have to contact their engineers on the street and get them to dig it up again, or bring in lifting gear for the new ironworks, and that would require traffic control.
Not a quick job, then.
I thanked him, and off he went on his merry way, and I jumped onto our village FB page to (a) let everyone know (that I was right in the first place), (b) tell them it’s likely to be a long job, and (c) ask if there are any businesses in the village where I can take my laptop and use their wi-fi if necessary.
At the time of writing, not one of our very local businesses responded. Not the pub, the hairdresser, the numerous farms, the massive community centre that’s always asking the poet to go and do a sound check for them when they have charity functions, the haulage firm where we store the campervan, the workshops at the top of the village where there are several businesses. They’re all quick enough to ask us to support them, especially the farmers, who are also our local NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard). But not one offered me desk space for just an hour or so a day for as long as we don’t have internet.
Two private individuals *did* respond: one to offer me the use of his home office or a spare bedroom; the other to offer me the potential use of our old school master’s house. But not one of the businesses in and around the village.
I will remember. I really will.
In between all of this, I did manage to post yesterday’s blog post, to publish next week’s book, to create the graphics for next week’s publication, to schedule next Monday’s blog post, to do my own blog surfing. I did it via the hotspot on my phone, and my poor phone almost overheated again in all the excitement. I also managed to write and schedule today’s blog post. I did a lot of diary work. And I did some work for Novella #10 of the great novella challenge.
Oh yes, and my website fell over. So I also managed a live chat with my host company, who refreshed the page for me and gave me some tips on how to prevent overload in the future.
It’s the monthly wrap-up tomorrow, so I’ll say have a great weekend now!
Today’s free image is courtesy of 3Dmask from depositphotos.
Oh, how frustrating, that none of the local businesses step up. Is there a library you can use, or is it too far to travel? I’m assuming the latter, or you’d already be doing it. That they keep passing the buck around the various contractors without doing anything is unsurprising, but disturbing.
Yes, there’s a library, a short car drive away. And they have a massive car park too. But I accepted one of the individual offers, as it’s in our old (school)master’s house in the village and within walking distance, and it’s a community building. They have free wi-fi too, and are happy to give me a key so I can come and go. All they ask is a small donation. Not one of the local businesses has stepped up, still.
Oh, that sounds like a great choice. It almost sounds like a positive co-working space.
I’m there right now!