Frustrating my-optic nerve...

Call me stupid. I went to Etisalat again.  I took down my 18 month old complaint to ask them to follow up on it (and try to get the outstanding amount taken off my account). But first I dropped in on sales to see what the status of fibre optic cable was. The last time I applied, some 6 months ago, I got told I could have fibre and they booked a technician to come. Unfortunately he went to Khalifa City A, instead of Abu Dhabi. And consequently my application got cancelled. They wouldn’t reinstate my application unless I visited in person, even though it was their mistake. The landline phone number the application was registered against was clearly in Abu Dhabi and different from my time in Khalifa. I love the way a phone company can’t handle business competently over the phone. 

Anyway since I was at the Etisalat HO I went to the surveyor and got him to check my location, and yes, it was still listing me with an incorrect address. He updated my record and assured me I could have fibre. He wrote various cryptic numbers on the bottom of an application form and sent me off to sales. At the sales desk I was told that there was no problem with getting the connection and he convinced me to go for a faster speed which would cost about the same as I was paying for DSL at the moment. So I signed up on Monday for a 16mb fibre optic connection wondering just how long it would take this time.  Next, I went upstairs to the customer service department to ask about my outstanding issue. There I was told that it was so old that they couldn’t look at it in the system but he took a photocopy of my complaint form and promised to pass it on to his supervisor in the morning. 6 dirham in parking fees (two hours premium) and I was on my way home with the promise of action on two fronts.

To my astonishment I was called at 4pm the next day to see if a technician could come to install my fibre connection that afternoon. I asked how long it would take and was told it would only take about an hour. I was very suspicious at that point as it seemed impossible to do everything in such a time but arranged for them to come at 5:30 and hastily arranged for my wife to take no.2 daughter down to her drum lesson (a taxi service I usually fulfil). The crew turned up pretty much on time (to my surprise) but did need quite a bit of phone coaching to find the actual house. When they arrived they spend about five minutes wandering around asking where the box was. To which I responded that they were here to put in the cable and the box. No, they replied they were just going to configure the “box”. I pointed out to them that someone needed to dig a trench and lay some fibre before they could do that and that they’d better get started. No, no that is a different crew. They would put in a report and another crew would come. If they hadn’t come in a couple of days I should call 101. And off they went. Useless.

Again to my surprise, the next day (Wednesday) I got a call to say that the next team was ready to come and could they do so at 3pm.  I checked that my wife would be home after picking up kids from school and agreed.  This next lot turned up and wanted to know from my wife where the ‘box’ was. She called me just as I was starting a class and I could only briefly relay to her that they were to install the box themselves, that was why they were there, to lay cable and install the fibre terminal.  Now apparently they spent a little time then went away and came back with another crew who told my wife that she could have the “box” today if she paid 1,100aed. She called me and I told her categorically that we did not have to pay. The technicians left without doing anything. My class finished at 5 and I drove straight to Etisalat. 3 aed premium parking. I got the same customer service agent that I’d talked with two days previously. I asked him first why I hadn’t been called back by his supervisor over that case. No answer to that. I then told him that we had been asked to pay for our installation. He was apologetic and said he’d heard of others being asked to pay 500 and that his supervisor had been able to sort it out. He said that they were independent contractors and he would get to the bottom of it and I would be called back by his supervisor – yeah right, like the last time I thought.

Thursday arrives and of course I don’t get called back by said supervisor, so I call 101. I relay the whole sad story and get a sympathetic hearing and a claim of shock that we had been asked for money. However, he said all I could do was wait for the technical team to now act on the installation. I pointed out that I was worried that now that I had not paid that I would get subjected to extra delays by the contractor. I also pointed out that in actual fact I have been waiting for 18 months for the fibre installation, as that was the source of my issue from originally moving into the location. Back then they had tried to cancel my DSL connection transfer because they were expecting to put in fibre but I insisted that I needed the DSL until the fibre actually arrived, and that since a DSL connection was already live in the house it should just be assigned to me.

So here we are again, time is marching on. So far I have had to be in contact with Etisalat everyday of this week. I have effectively wasted 2 hours per day dealing with them.  I think I might need to start charging them my daily rate plus transport and parking fees. Certainly this time around I am going to keep a closer note of the actual progress.