Don’t Always Believe the Advertising!

Hi again everyone,
 

Well here I am once more and still not on the Internet properly in spite of trying really hard and in ever more serious ways. My landline broadband is still not working due to those lovely bureaucrats at the Internet Service providers. They are still arguing among themselves it seems and even the 2 or 3 calls to Oftel have so far had no effect whatsoever.
 

What I have done today then is what I finally thought would be an instant solution, or so all the advertising would have had me believe. It has cost me about £960 for a two year contract and I should have been online in minutes according to all of PC World’s advertising. I have been along to them this morning and invested in a mobile broadband deal with a brand spanking new Sony Vaio top of the range laptop. This came with a (three mobile modem )and according to all the ads it says you will be on the www within minutes. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. Funny or what. Good job I am not the nervous type.
 

I even paid for PC World to set everything up so that I would be ready to go as soon as I got home. This alone cost me £30 and I had to wait two hours for it all to be setup for me. Then I went home, 20 miles from the PC World  shop switched on my computer and away we go or so I thought. Plug in the dongle, press connect and onto the internet you go I was told by the boffins in ths store. I am suddenly whisked online in an instant? Ok try it again and get online, and again, and again, and again! I think you get the picture. Ring up the shop and tell them, you must be joking, you just get an Indian call centre after the usual… press 1, press 2, press 3 etc up to 7 or 8 options then another 2 or 3 and so on.
 Having got nowhere and it now being 6pm, ( I started the purchase at 11am by the way)  off I trundle the 20 miles back to the shop. The tech guys there give a ticking off to the young salesman for NOT telling me that even though I paid them to set everything up!! I am supposed to ring up and activate the system by myself, so why I ask did I give them £30 quid extra in the first place.
 

Anyway they then sorted it out for me in the shop and as all the advertising says I am supposed to be online within 5 minutes, after all that’s what it says on all the literature and TV and the box. and the dongle case.
 Well guess what, they have to let me talk to the call centre to confirm my identity as the purchaser for the mobile contract, and at this time I am reliably informed that I will be online in 24 hours. Now when I went to school, I know it was 46 years ago, but I am sure that five minutes from 24 hours amounts to 23 hours and 55 minutes difference. Wow what a big difference I make that. Whatever happened to the adverting standards agency?
 Consequently it is now midnight on Thursday 7th August and I am writing this in my new computer scratchpad ready to copy to my blog, I hope sometime tomorrow, which unless I have got my maths wrong like PC World and the three corporation often seem to, will make it Friday 8th August, a whole day later. One can only hope. If I do get online I will add a little piece to this just to let you all know what time it eventually happened. Don’t hold your breath though please.

So there we have it again my loyal readers. BEWARE the LARGE CORPORATIONS. They all lie through their eye teeth, and we the little guys have to suffer the circumstances while paying very highly for the priviledge.
 I will add one thing tonight. Although once again I am not online with my own computer, I am convinced 120 percent that when I do get back on there John Thornhill will still be waiting to teach me more of his course and my various emails to him will be answered. I need to do some serious catching up and when I do I will be very much the wiser about many more things.
 I will be a whole lot further up that mountain again and I hope completely ready to start producing a fantastic product for you all to see in due course. More on that when I am back to normal. In the meantime I will sign off once again and cross my fingers that the mobile broadband will start to work tomorrow afternoon. I certainly hope so because at the moment the computer world at large is really beginning to seem like a circus clown or a massive joke simply sent to try and put me off ever getting online again.
  So until HOPEFULLY tomorrow then as it is now 12.40am on the 8th (well we are now hopefully in the big get on the net day) Nite Nite for now. All the best  to all you Internet hopefuls.

PS I am online and it is now 9.54pm the following day, Friday 8th August, and according to the Chinese 8 is supposed to be lucky, well it seems to have worked for me, but only after a long story. Tell you more in a while.

Dave Robus.