So, I woke up in an empty house, but it was a house in Port Alberni. I couldn't do an awful lot without the Internet and with only minimal stuff. And I'm still pretty frazzled so I can't really remember what I did from about 2:30 in the morning until I headed out to the Save-on, at 7:00 a.m., because I knew that they would be open and I could use their wifi to check my email and dictate some stuff.
I checked the prices at Save-On, and actually made a list of things that I wanted to get at some point. Then, back to the house, because the girls had said that they would be there at about that time. Even though the movers we're not going to be in Port Alberni until just before noon, and they were going to drop some stuff at Number One Daughter's storage place, before they brought the bulk of the stuff to my house. So, with nothing particularly to do, Number One Daughter and I went and did some errands. We went to the post office, because we were told that that was how we could get the mailbox keys which the developers had not arranged to obtain. Got the keys, and also found out yet another mistake in the address: the postal code is different once again. I also tried to put in a change of address and redirection, but the post office computer system wouldn't allow it. It coughed on the address: no, not the new address in Port Alberni that keeps changing, but my address in Delta, which has been in place for some time, and which the post office, in fact, has on a mail redirection already, from North Vancouver. May you live in interesting times. (This has started to become a major problem. I've been back to the post office three times now, and have had a phone call with, and email from, a supervisor, who says he can't get anyone to do anything because this is a computer problem, and belongs with a software venor, over which the post office has no control. he said to call the 800 number service line. The 800 number service line said *they* can't do anything, and I should contact the local post office, who could ...)
So then we went and had some copies of my keys cut, and then, armed with the new postal code, went to the Service BC office, where I was able to get my driver's license and Care card stickered with the new address right away. So, armed with an officially stickered driver's license from the government, I was able to change the address on my car insurance, at a insurance agency in town, and will eventually get a bit of a refund. I also stopped in at the bank, and rented a safety deposit box over here, and deposited the stuff that I had brought from the safe deposit box in town. Once I find various things in my stuff there are a few more items that I want to put in a safe deposit box. Number One Daughter was still with me at the beginning of the safe deposit process, and I wanted to get her signed up in on the safe deposit box as well, so that she could have access to it in case of emergency, but there was yet another new computer system involved at the bank, and it took the bank people forever to figure out how to rent me a safe deposit box. By which time Number One Daughter had had to leave to meet the movers at her storage place. I walked back from the bank to my place, stopping for a coffee at the local coffee shop, three blocks from my house, where I finally found out their wifi password, by which time the movers were there and starting to put stuff into my new house. So, my house has furniture in it, not necessarily exactly where it will end up, and piles of boxes in various locations which I will have to unpack and find places for.
Number One Daughter says now that I have all of the cupboard space, and wire shelf racks in the closets in the new place, and bookcases and shelving units, I have no excuse for leaving things out on tables and counters. I did kind of wonder about that, but the girls were absolutely terrific and we're arranging and rearranging the furniture, allowing me to concentrate on putzing around in the kitchen, and getting it into order. I was able to break down the contents of the kitchen by quite a variety of categories, and have sufficient cupboards that I can sort them by those categories, without jamming too much into any one cupboard, and I still have three cupboards to spare, if I remember correctly. As well as a few drawers in a couple of dressers which have ended up sort of extending the kitchen. So, I think I can work on that: not leaving anything out. It sort of feels like being told that you have to put your toys away when you're finished playing with them. The problem being, I never finish playing with them! That's what being a systems analyst is: you are always playing with things and ideas. But I will work I'm putting them away on a regular basis when I'm not actually working with them.
All of this moving type stuff was interrupted with a massive call to Telus. It was prompted by the fact that the Shaw cable installer was going around and very aggressively selling the people who were moving into the development, who were without Internet because Telus still can't get their act together, and selling them on the idea of switching to Shaw. So, I called Telus, to see if they could give me any more assurance that I will have connectivity next week. (Partly because earlier in the day two guys from Telus had showed up, and dropped a section of fiber optic cable, or at least connected it, between a box in the ground, and the building that I'm in. Apparently there are two further connections that have to be made, one from the connection to the building to my actual unit, and one from some mythical pole somewhere which seems to be the sticking point.)
This whole Telus thing has been going on for about a month now. On September 19th, I contacted Telus to see about the move and the possibilities. I did not want to move, and be without Internet or phone access. (Television is not a major concern for me.) In any case, on September 19th they said that they were qualifying my address and would call me back within a couple of days. They never did. A little over a week later, on September 27th, I called them back again, since they hadn't called me. The representative I spoke to at that time said that they would call me back within hours. They never did.
On October 4th I called once again. This time, they had apparently qualified the address. Whatever that involved. On that call, the representative made an appointment for a technician to come and do the installation, at my house, of the phone, the internet, and the television service. I had not wanted to make specific arrangements for the move, until I had phone and Internet service at the new place. So, based on the commitment and specific date and time, from Telus, I booked everything else. In negotiation with the girls, I booked the movers, the ferry, and arranged for Number One Daughter to be at my new place, on October the 11th, for the extended window that Telus wants you to be home for, to provide access for them to come in and do the installation. (I should note, that at this point, the agent didn't say anything about me moving any of the existing Telus gear from Delta to Port Alberni.)
There was no further communication from Telus between that call and October the 11th. On October the 11th, Number One Daughter was at the appointed place, at the appointed time, and waited several hours, and no Telus technician ever showed up. So, between other things that I was doing that day, I had yet another phone call with Telus. Two, in fact. In the first call to Telus, the representative I talked to could not find any indication of any appointment with any technician from Telus on the 11th. As far as he was concerned it just didn't exist. Regardless of the commitment and assurance I had been given from Telus on October 4th. He did agree to make another appointment, but he was very coy about whether this appointment, which was made for October the 18th, would, in fact, take place. Apparently they were still concerned about this mythical pole, wherever it is, and whatever has to be done with it to connect this last mile problem. At any rate, that representative did promise that I would get a confirmation email. Which didn't happen for a few hours. When it did happen, as previously noted in one of my postings, the phone number for the technician to contact when he was in Port Alberni and wanted access to my new house, was the landline for the house in Delta. Which seems not only phenomenally stupid, but is also a little bit insulting, since that is a number that Gloria had before I married her, and which has been our number for the entire term of our marriage, and which Telus did allow me to move from North Vancouver to Delta, but which now Telus says they cannot move to Port Alberni. I'm very disappointed in that, but I suppose that is only one minor disappointment against the vast incompetence of Telus in terms of providing service, and certainly in terms of the customer service, or non-service, which I have experienced in regard to this move.
So, yesterday, prompted by the offer from the Shaw Cable guy, I called Telus once again. Once again I had to explain to the agent that I have been trying to get this move arranged for a month, that Telus has not called back when they said they will call back, that Telus has given us an appointment with the technician, who never showed up, and which appointment, according to their computer system, never existed, and perhaps the technician never existed either, and that I had no assurance that the appointment for the 18th was actually going to happen, and that I was getting frustrated, and not only was I getting frustrated, but Telus was going to lose a number of other customers as well because a Shaw cable installer was willing, at his own initiative, and on his day off, to come in and do a bunch of installations for Telus customers who were without service. One would think that this might be of some interest to Telus. Apparently, one would be wrong.
Having explained this whole situation, once again, to the first agent that I talked to yesterday, he wished to get someone else involved in the call. I was on hold for a considerable length of time. Eventually Telus' brain dead call management system kicked in on the game and, eventually, rang another agent. Who, of course, had no idea of any of what had gone on and I had to explain the entire situation once again. That representative wanted to get someone else involved in the call and on the line. Once again that didn't happen. Once again Telus' brain dead call management system, after a considerable time of music on hold, kicked in again, and transferred me to yet *another* agent, who knew nothing of the situation. This third agent that I talked to, not only did not know anything about the situation, but very profoundly did not care. This agent simply kept reiterating that installing the Internet on fiber optic cable was a complicated business and there could be various factors that might impede it, and I could not expect any assurance that anything would happen at any point in the future. Tough luck. I started to push a bit at this point, and asked if there was not any escalation process, since I had been working on this for a month without any satisfaction at all. He said that he would transfer me to a manager.
So, that's how I got on to Josh. Josh is apparently on the escalation management team. If I do stick with Telus (but, at this point, I probably won't), it will be entirely due to Josh's efforts.
Josh, at the very least, understood that this was a somewhat frustrating situation. Josh committed to pursuing the matter, and gave me a case number, and a phone number that I could call back and leave a message for him. He also committed that he would be getting back to me on Monday. It's actually not that much of an advance, since we would find out, by trial and error, whether the installer was actually going to show up, on Tuesday, when the installer is supposed to show up. However, Josh did agree with my contention that I did not want to be held ransom by the agreement that I signed with Telus when I moved to Delta, to continue on as a customer for a two-year period. Josh did agree that no penalty would be assessed if I was completely sick of Telus (since they can't seem to provide any service at all) and went with Shaw, which I thought was very fair of him.
It may, of course, be that the escalation management team is simply given license to say nice things to the customers, in order to cool them down, and give Telus time to either do something, or to wait for the customer to get tired of complaining and simply put up with whatever lack of service Telus feels fit to provide. But it is, at least, something that their customer service representatives should be made aware of. Telling people that they are right, and that the service that they have seen is not adequate, and that something will be done, is more effective at terms of keeping customers, then is simply telling them tough, this is a difficult process, and we're not getting you anything, and we're going to continue charging you anyway.
I had hoped, that having my stuff, and, actually, being in my own bed for the first time in a while, might have allowed me to get some sleep. Unfortunately that was not the case. I got about four hours sleep, and then woke up with the Telus saga rattling around in my head, and no way to dictate it out. I also had a couple of other ideas that I wanted to get down, which now seem to have left me, because of some of the stuff that I did around the house before I took a shower, and headed out, first to the coffee shop to get a quick check of my email, and respond to my brother, who has had some medical difficulties on a trip to foreign climes, but now appears to be safely on his way home, and then to the Shoppers parking lot, to dictate most of yesterday's story, and the latest update on the Telus story, until the Save-on could open, at which point I got into the Save-on, which is much warmer than walking around the Shoppers parking lot across the street. I'll be leaving shortly to go down to the waterfront, which may seem like a weird thing to do on a very cold day, but Number One Daughter tells me that there is an atmospheric phenomenon because of the warm ocean water that makes its way up the inlet on cold fall days. So I want to be there at the time she suggested to see it.
The girls have something to do this morning, but early in the afternoon they are going to come over and put together my new desk. Which will be helpful, although I won't be able to set up the computer and use it terribly effectively until I actually get the Internet connected. In the meantime, I have other possible things to do. I'll be unpacking the boxes of stuff for the china cabinets in the living room, and getting that set up, including the books on display. As well, there is the bathroom and my drug supply, to get set up and put in place and organized. Both of those are similar putzing operations to the kitchen organization that I did yesterday, so they will be tasks that take some time and will have to be dealt with by myself so it's actually an advantage that the girls have something else to do this morning.
This long dictation, and possibly the fact that I was using the phone fairly extensively yesterday, and possibly the fact that it's quite cold and so that stops the battery, means that my battery is almost dead on this phone. So after going down to the waterfront, I'll head back to my place, and probably switch batteries on the two phones, and put the other phone, with the dead battery, on to charge.
There are things to get used to in the new house. The fridge has a very interesting freezer section, which has no bins, only baskets. It also has no ice cube bucket or area, so I am figuring out how to stock up on ice cubes by storing them in plastic bags and building up a supply that way. The washing machine is still something of a mystery to me. Yesterday we started a load of bedding, which I had simply stripped off the bed and stuffed into a garbage bag in Delta, figuring that we could wash it in Port Alberni. The washing machine here in Port Alberni is much larger than the apartment size washing and drying unit in Delta. However, last night when I took the mattress protector out of the dryer, and it was finally dry (the dryer is also a bit of a mystery and kept on changing its mind about how much longer it would take to dry the mattress protector), I finally had the washing machine stopped, and decided to give it an extra rinse. However, the washer just displayed the code "Loc" on the panel and refused to do anything. It wouldn't switch to a different cycle, it didn't matter if I opened the door and reseated the laundry inside, and I couldn't select much of anything on the system. Even when I told the machine to shut off, it displayed the code Loc, but then did shut off. Once it did, it would not restart, once again simply showing the code Loc and refusing to do anything else, and then shutting off. Hopefully it will have sorted itself out by this morning, but it's definitely annoying, and I'll have to figure out what the weirdnesses of this machine are.
I had previously signed up for a library card, and then validated it by taking in my tax form, at which point I was able to actually start using it, and start placing holds. Three of them had come in, by the time I got here, so I one of the other things that I did yesterday was to go to the library, and check out 1) their wifi access, 2) there in-branch catalogue system, and 3) how to use the checkout system. Their checkout system is the same as was in North Van before North Van "upgraded," so one of the other things that I did in the course of all of that with memorize my library number here. So I've gone through fair number of exercises in terms of how I'm going to use the library here.
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