British Customer Service Soapbox

Let me start out by saying that in general I'm not a complainer and think of myself on the whole as a pretty tough chick. However, there have been two institutions in the UK that have both brought to my knees, banking and telecom. I'm just at the point where I can't hold my tongue any longer and dealings with both of these institutions have made me seriously consider going back home. Whenever I mention the concept of customer service in the UK I am promptly corrected that it is the lack of customer service. Since most of my woes with the banking industry are over now, I won't harp on them too much. Due to a high level on money laundering in London the banks do not want your money and will refuse to open a bank account for you unless you provide proof of residency, proof of employment, blood sample, urine sample, DNA testing, hair follicle, retina scan, letter of reference from HRH Queen Elizabeth...you get the point.

My real gripe is with the unruly, unconscionable, fat, dumb, and happy monopoly known as British Telecom (BT). You may think that not having a landline isn't a big deal, however, British Telecom has got everyone by the you know what because you CANNOT GET BROADBAND or EVEN DIAL-UP without first renting a BT phone line. Doesn't matter how you try to get the broadband (cable, satellite, terrestrial) no one can give you an internet connection without going through those greedy b*st*rds first. The following list of events will give you some insight into what I've been dealing with for nearly a month now. None of this is fabricated or exaggerated.

• Sept 29 - Move into new flat.
• Oct 3 - Call British Telecom (BT) to setup a phone line, on hold for 30 minutes. Must hand over all of my personal details so that someone will ring me back in 48 hours.
• Oct 5 - Follow-up call to BT, on hold for 54 minutes. BT apologizes that I have not been called back and promises I will get called within the next 24 hours. They cannot do anything at this point because I have not gotten the call back which assigns me an order number which is my only identity at BT.
  
• Oct 6 - BT rings back with my order number. Am told my new phone line will be initiated within 6 working days because it takes them that long to flip a switch at the central office.
• Oct 10 - BT rings me while in Holland to say that they've called the phone number currently assigned to my flat and someone is living there who is not moving out. I tell them that that is my correct flat # from what the estate agent has assured me. She suggests I look at (but not open) the mail from the previous tenant to see if I can match a name. I tell her I'm in Holland so it's not possible so she'll ring me back if she needs anything else.
• Oct 18 - Return from my traveling and ring BT since my phone line is still not working. On hold for 36 minutes. BT picks up, the line drops. Call BT again, on hold for 42 minutes. We can't get consensus on my flat since BT says is flat #3 while my mail all says first floor flat. Due to the confusion they must establish a new order for a brand new phone line assigned to the first floor flat. She makes an appointment for an engineer to come on October 26.
• Oct 25 - BT sends me a text message that there is no line to take over at my premises and to call BT for further instructions. Call BT, on hold for 1 hour 2 minutes. I am told that a new line must be setup since one does not exist now (What the heck? Isn't that why I had an appointment?). Line drops. Thankfully she calls me back but they've made an appointment for me for November 7 when I'll be out of the country. She must transfer me to another department to change the appointment. "All lines are busy we cannot proceed with your call." URGH!!! Call back, on hold for 53 minutes. They can change my appointment but nothing is available until November 13.

This does not include the countless times where they have not picked up, dropped the line, or transfered me all over the company. Come November 13, we'll see how they choose to screw with me next. Sorry for all the ranting but this is seriously ridiculous.

Hope and Glory

This weekend I went to Paris to watch the South African Springbox team defeat the English Rose in the World Cup Rugby. I've never been much of a rugby fan, or any other spectator sport for that matter, but my friend Brit came across from New York so I had to come see her. She's Australian so she was basically born watching rugby and cricket. It was just a nice time to catch up with a good friend and I wanted to experience what it was like in a World Cup city during the finals. As much as Americans may love their football and baseball, I think that Europeans are much more die hard fans. They have to wait four years to see a World Cup final and they wait with great anticipation and reverie.

I took the Eurostar from London-Waterloo to Paris-Gare du Nord which is what I must say the only way travel from London to Paris. No 2 hour check-in, no baggage restrictions, no long security lines, and best of all, not restrictions on liquids. When Eurostar moves next month, it will be 30 minutes shorter travel time putting the journey at a little over 2 hours. But I digress. London-Waterloo was a nightmare especially since I arrived 20 minutes before my train was scheduled to leave. I had to push through the tens of thousands of England fans to be one of the last people on the train. On the way to Paris I soon discovered that the two official England Rugby songs are The Gambler by Kenny Rogers and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Why the English chose an American country song and a Negro slave song as their rugby anthems I have no idea but I still can't get know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em out of my head. When I arrived in Paris-Gare du Nord I had to wait nearly an hour in the taxi queue and then sat in traffic for another 30 minutes. It all worked out though because taxis were impossible to come by and arrived at the hotel just in time for Brit, Mike, and Tonya to hop in my taxi and head to the pub. We headed to the area called St. Germain to watch the game with the thousands of other fans who didn't want to shell out a minimum of 800 GBP to attend the game. Being in a World Cup city during the finals is just amazing. To be right in the thick of the madness and the energy is intoxicating, and I'm not just talking about the beers.

Sadly though the English lost to South Africa 6-to-15 but everyone agreed that South Africa was the better team. There was some controversy to the game though as one of the English players scored a try (similar to a touch down in football) but was called out because his foot touched the line first (depending on which camera angle you saw). The English swear that this was a pivotal turning point in the game even though it still would have put them 1 point behind at the time. Brit was ecstatic though since it was the English team that dashed her Auzzie team's hope of a rugby win. All in all it was a tough week for the English in the world of sports. The football team will most likely not qualify for Euro 2008 (some convoluted scheme of how Russia needs to lose to Israel and England needs to beat Croatia), they were unable to defend their World Cup Rugby championship title from 2003 and finally the rookie Lewis Hamilton and the McLaren team walked away with nothing but a 50 million GBP fine after the final Formula 1 Grand Prix race in Brazil yesterday. British Airways did rename the club plane to "Hope and Glory" for the English rugby team.

Needless to say that my train ride home was a bit more somber and did not include any singing or chanting. I did get to ride in first class this time so I had quite a nice ride home. Geez I love Eurostar. Here are the pictures.

Rat Race

What a crazy time it's been. Directly after moving into my new flat I had Hyung and his wife, Grace, over for a visit and then I had to leave them for a business trip on the continent. Although I've been traveling quite a bit for work already, I had some anxiety over this journey because it involved driving myself across several countries back on the right side of the road. I was also hoping to get my TomTom all setup for this trip (since it currently only has the UK and Ireland maps) so that I wouldn't have to be at the mercy of the car rental company for a sat nav system. Unfortunately though my TomTom barfed at the new SD card that I purchased so I had to rush to print out all the Google map directions before I left. Once printed I realized that this wasn't as useful as I'd hoped since I really couldn't read or decipher any of the street names.

Monday afternoon I started my journey by flying from London Heathrow to Brussels Airport. The flight was fine and I arrived on time. I made my way to the Avis counter and asked for a car with a sat nav. Since I would be returning the car in Germany, they only had one car that they could provide me, a Skoda station wagon. I decided first things first, test out the sat nav to ensure it could get me from Belgium to Holland to Germany. I put in my destination in Germany and it looked liked I was golden. I was about to pull out of the garage when I decided I should try the address that I had in Belgium as well. Lucky for me it turned out that I had a car registered in Germany that had a sat nav CD that only covered Germany. Since no other cars with a sat nav were available I had to make due with my Google map directions and head to Ghent. According to Google, my travel time should take about 1 hour and with a little bit of traffic I figured 1.5 to 2 hours. The directions looked simple enough but after driving around in circles for 3 hours I figured that I must be lost. Once I finally reached the hotel, 4 hours later, I realized that the detour signs leading me to the hotel stopped right before the exit that I was supposed to take.

Over the next few days my route consisted of driving from Ghent, Belgium to Maarssen, Netherlands to Duisburg, Germany to Eindhoven, Netherlands and back to Duisburg, Germany. Every night after I packed up the Altera booth, I had to ensure that I had someone else from the caravan to follow to the next city. This was no easy feat in my massive Skoda station wagon. (Skodas are not sold in the US because these cars are rubbish. They are poor imitations that contain the lowest end cheapest VW engines.) Thursday night I finally made my way to Dusseldorf Airport where I had a delayed flight back to London Heathrow due to the poor weather in Germany. Can you guess what was the first thing I did when I got into my car a bit past midnight? I merrily starting driving on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic. I narrowly escaped an accident. Lovely.

Familiar Faces and Familiar Places

My apologies for the lack of blogging lately, so much has passed in the last few weeks that I just haven’t had a chance to sit down and write. I also moved again last week and thanks to the superb UK customer service, still do not have broadband (let a phone line) at home yet. After a couple weeks with the Kiwi boys I decided that, between the stress of constant traveling and integrating into my country, I need my own quiet sanctuary and unrestricted access to the TV. They were lovely boys who tried to make me feel as welcome as possible but we just have very different lifestyles. We parted on friendly terms and I hope we’ll be able to hang out again in the future. The good news is that I now have a lovely 2-bedroom flat in the Maida Vale area of London for anyone who would like to come and visit. I’ve actually already had my first visitors from home come stay.

Speaking of home, a couple weeks ago this arrived in the post for me:


The wonderful ladies of Altera were kind enough to put together an amazing “San Francisco” care package for me. It was a perfect reminder of home and contained things like cookies from Miette, honeycomb from a farm in Woodland, a couple bottles of Acacia wine, rag mags, and even a hardcopy of The Onion. I could see exactly how much care and attention they put into deciding what to include and how carefully it was all wrapped and packaged. Big hugs to Maria, Kira, and Kelly.

Last week was another special delivery, Hyung (my coworker from San Jose) and his wife came for a visit. They flew into London for a few hours and then took the Eurostar to Paris for a couple days. When they returned Saturday night we headed out to the Salt House Pub near Maida Vale for dinner with the old Altera crew (Ro, his wife Sheetal, Grant, and me). On Sunday we went sightseeing and started in Windsor to see the Windsor Castle and Eton College. Windsor Castle is one of the three remaing royal residences (beside Buckingham Palace and the Palace of Holyroodhouse). From the view you can tell that this castle was built originally as a fortress. It sits high on a hill overlooking the towns of Windsor and Eton and seems impenetrable from every angle. We then walked across the Thames to Eton to see Eton College. Eton College is a secondary school for boys and is refered to as the world's most famous public school and probably one of the most expensive. (Point of clarification - yes it's strange but the English refer to fee-charging schools as "public" as opposed to "private" which used to refer to private tutors at home.) It was founded in 1440 by King Henry IV and still upholds every tradition, the boys' daily uniform still consists of a black tailcoat and pinstripe trousers. Mark Darcy refers to it in the Bridget Jones' Diary - Edge of Reason movie (yes I am obsessed with chick flicks). I'm starting to find more and more sights in England that I really enjoy. Windsor Castle was spectacular and Oxford made me want to be a student again. Unfortunately I had to fly out on another business trip Monday afternoon and didn't get to join them on their final day in London.

Here are the pictures from Windsor and Oxford. Sorry I didn't have time to do all the links but I've been neglecting my blog for too long.