Telefónica sucks

It’s amazing how hard it is to get temporary Internet access in Spain. Or permanent access for that matter. Earlier this month I decided to switch ISPs. On 9 May I sent a letter to my old provider notifying them of my desire to discontinue the service and on the same day I applied with a new provider.

9 days later I got a letter from the new provider, signed the enclosed form and returned it. They advise that setting up new connections usually takes 30 days from the date on which they receive the signed form. So, best case scenario: 9 days to receive the form, 1 more day for them to get it back, plus 30 days to establish the connection; 40 days to get an ADSL connection. Last time I checked, Spain was not a developing nation but a developed one, and this is the 21st century, right?

On 21 May my old provider notified me that I’d be able to enjoy the benefits of my access until the end of the billing period shown on my last bill. That meant that my access would be cut off at the end of 26 May.

With uncharacteristic efficiency, however, they decided to cut off access the very next day, depriving me of five full days of access. This is the only time in my entire history of dealings with ya.com that they’ve actually done something before they said they would.

Bearing in mind the 40-day prognosis for getting the new connection I decided to investigate getting temporary dial-up access in the meantime. I can go to Internet cafes with my laptop, but it’s not very convenient or efficient. All of my data and software is here in the office. If I go to the Internet cafe once per day it means that there may be a delay of 24 hours or more (depending on the time of day that I go to the cafe) between customers sending me email and me actually reading it. If the query requires me to search back over my records then I won’t be able to reply to the customer, will have to do the search back at the office, and then reply on my next trip the following day. So we are talking about 48 hours minimum turn-around time in that case. If the customer’s query does not include sufficient details and I have to ask for more information then the issue can drag out to 72 or even 96 hours before getting resolved. I know that none of this is my fault, but even so I don’t like making my customers wait that long and I’m sure they don’t like it either.

So I try to get dial-up access. Would you believe how hard it is to get such access in Spain? Once again, I ask myself what century I’m in…

My first port of call was a Telefónica store on Gran Vía. It’s easy, they say, all you have to do is install this software and you’re set to go. The CD they handed me was for Windows only. Why should I have to install software to get dial-up access? That’s what the System Preferences are for: entire access phone number, username, password, and you should be good to go.

So I said I had a Mac and therefore couldn’t use the CD. She advised me to go to the official Telefónica store in the Calle Mayor. The person in the official store couldn’t help either, but she did point out that there was a support number on the disc and I could try calling that.

I get home and try calling and am presented with a recorded greeting that tells me to try a new, different number, then hangs up in my ear. I call the new number and hear another recording that says that seeing as I am not a Telefónica ADSL customer, I should call my local provider, and then hangs up in my ear.

I try calling my new provider to see if they can provide me temporary dial-up access why I’m waiting for the ADSL. They cannot. Although they do provide dial-up access they provide it on a contract basis, not a temporary one, and it’s not possible to apply for one contract-based plan when you’re already in the process of getting another one hooked up. To find out this I had to call them about four times, by the way, because first the person I spoke to in one group told me I had to hang up and call again asking for another group; but then that group told me to hang up and call back the first group etc. Why can’t they just transfer these calls internally? And why are they so incompetent that they don’t even know with certainty which section should be handling my call? Incidentally, while waiting on hold I hear a recording that "reminds" me that ADSL connections usually take 30 to 35 days; 35 days eh? Bumped up by 5 days from the previous prediction, so that takes me to 45 days total to get ADSL hooked up. In the 21st century. In Western Europe. Right.

So I go over to my friend’s house and try the Telefónica website. I sign up for their basic net access using their web form. Once again it tells me to download some Windows software in order to get connected. When I try to download the configuration instructions for Mac, the linked PDF turns out to be a document of zero bytes in length.

I trawl the site for configuration instructions and manage to find some help documents with screenshots of configuration settings for Windows 95/98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux (well, these aren’t screenshots but command-line set-up instructions) and finally MacOS (but the screenshots are of MacOS 8/9). Some of the screenshots show DNS IP addresses that contradict the textual information on the same page. Of all the operating systems shown, none of them except for Windows XP show an access phone number. So I write down the access phone number.

I also find a support phone number. I dial it and ask for confirmation of the access phone number. She tells me it’s wrong and gives me the actual number. (Five days later on my twentieth call to Telefónica I’m finally told that that number was wrong too and I’m given yet another one.)

Now I’m all set to go, right? On getting home I try connecting with my shiny new dial-up access, but the system rejects my password. I try connecting using a terminal prompt just to be sure that everything is set up correctly and I verify that I am indeed getting a login and password prompt. I try a couple of variations of the username just to be sure but all are rejected.

Time to call support again. Basically I want to find out if their is some kind of activation delay (I would have thought that activation would be totally automated and instant, like it is back in Australia), or whether I’ve set something up incorrectly.

So I call the number and again the system hangs up in my ear because I’m not an ADSL customer. I call the general customer service number and try to speak to an operator. When I finally do get through to an operator I am told I need to hang up and call again and ask for "Telefónica online".

This is one of those charming automated systems in which a computer asks you questions and you respond orally instead of pressing buttons on your phone. It asks me for the reason for my call. I say I want to be connected to "Telefónica online". I hear a recorded greeting saying that everything I need to know about Telefónica online can be found on their website, and it hangs up in my ear. Not very helpful when I am looking for tech support about getting online.

I call back and tell the computer that I need to speak with an operator. The computer tells me it needs to know why I am calling. I tell the computer about how it keeps hanging up in my ear. Finally the computer decides to connect me to a human being. The human being listens to my story and manually transfers me to another human being in Telefónica online. Hooray!

That human being informs me that my dial-up account isn’t active yet, and that is why my username and password are being rejected. (Nearly a week later someone else in Telefónica who actually knows what he is talking about informs me that that’s incorrect and that activation is instant, as I expected it would be.) She tells me I will receive an email once it is all hooked up. Hmmm… So how am I going to check this email, given that I don’t have access, I wonder? I ask her to which address the notification will be sent. She tells me: wincent5@telefonica.net (wincent@telefonica.net was already taken, incredibly; how many Wincents are there in Spain anyway?). So let me get this straight: you are going to inform me that my account has been activated by sending an email to the account that you have promised to provide me but to which I won’t have any access until you decide to provide me said access? Unbelievable…

Given that such notification is entirely useless to me I ask her how long these activations normally take and she tells me she doesn’t imagine it will be too long. Great. Thanks for the precise and detailed information.

So I don’t know when I’ll be getting dial-up access, nor how long I’ll be waiting before I get the ADSL back. Given the incompetence of everyone I’ve had to deal with so far, there are no guarantees that the dial-up access will actually work, nor that Telefónica won’t delay the transfer of my line to Jazztel because it’s now "encumbered" with a dial-up access account as well. Sigh.

Update 29 May 2006: Finally after seven days of trying and countless frustrating phone calls have managed to get the dial-up access working. This is something that could have been solved on the very first day if I had spoken to somebody, anybody, that actually knew what he/she was talking about.