I should’ve been posting this via a fancy new super-fast broadband connection over the national grid, one to which our new supplier was only too eager to sign us up and get us connected. Dundalk’s one of the launch towns for Siro, after all, and there’s quite the drive locally to get people hooked up. Our own connection was scheduled for eight days ago. But it never happened. Because apparently the clearance to the nearest electricity pole is too far, and our house is too low. Funny that, considering every house in this neighbourhood is a bungalow.
That’s bad enough, being promised Siro availability, even receiving the router by courier, only for the on-site engineers to dash our hopes. What’s worse is that I doubt we’d even know that by now if we hadn’t chased up the supplier for an answer, especially with the end date of our existing contract looming.
A whole week of silence went by before I rang yesterday to demand confirmation, a yes or a no. They stalled, telling me the engineers were meeting to discuss the issue and that I would be called back this morning with the news. A likely story, that ‘meeting’; I’m wise to such fibs at this stage. And when the promised call didn’t arrive, you can imagine I was furious.
It’s funny how an ultimatum finally gets things moving, isn’t it? After ringing a few times (and getting the impression my number was red-flagged, how often the line went dead) I received a mobile call from an engineer who finally gave a straight answer: not possible. Weirdly enough, they apparently talked to me before Digiweb, because the sales team there didn’t believe me when I called them back to close the account. But I wasn’t having any more of their bullshit.
Better with the devil you know. By which I mean, I got right back on the phone to renew with our current supplier, eir. Despite all the trouble we had with them this past autumn, I’ve come to realise their terrible customer service is no better or worse than anyone else’s, so it pays to be pragmatic about it. Especially since it’s their fibre infrastructure regardless. So we reconsidered their offer of a reduced price contract, and now we don’t have to worry about losing our broadband connection over Xmas. No thanks to Digiweb and the Siro engineers at Actavo.
Anyway. Now that’s taken care of, we can look forward to the holidays — and an actual holiday, to Galway for a few days before Xmas. I’ve already booked dinner at our favourite restaurant, and I plan on doing a lot of nothing in particular.
Before that, though, I’ve got a print deadline looming, plus a day at the cinema for a couple of late press screenings. I’m missing quite a lot of Oscar bait lately, due to said deadline and other general unavailability. That’s always been the way, but it feels like more than usual this month. In the meantime, you can read my two latest reviews, for Moana and I Am Not a Serial Killer.