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How to deal with technophobes (IT and otherwise)

And so for the 3rd time this year a tractor has broken the telephone line along the road leading to our house. For 3 days the telephone was crackly and the internet came and went. The Livebox flashed red then occasionally all lights i went green and we rushed to our computers to pick up and answer emails on the big screen.
As it kept returning we thought someone was working on it and giving them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it was a big repair.
After 3 days with increasingly more red than green we called our service provider who after some discussion about why we were calling from a mobile, and us having to explain that our fixed line was broken and that was the reason we were calling, confirmed that there was a problem on the line and engineers were working on it. " I will call you in 72 hours (is that real hours or working hours?) to confirm it has been fixed.
A day later a technician came along and told us that the line up the road was broken and he would be back this afternoon to fix it. But this being a friday he of course didn’t return.
Saturday morning (no it is not a typo)we received a call from some department of our network supplier. “We need to gain access to your house” “Why?” “Because you reported your phone out of order.” “Yes, but why do you need access to our house when the technician and your engineers with their computers have already confirmed that the problem lies 300metres up the road” “We need to test it.”
Ahh ok thought I they are going to fix the line and come and test to see that it is ok. Its good customer service but I could tell them if it when it is working because I can make a phone call and the lights all flash green on the livebox.
“Oh no we have to come and test it” says the man from Orange.
“Ok, when?”
“Monday, afternoon”
I thought yippee our phone would be fixed monday morning, but there was a problem.
Monday morning we were due to be travelling to the North of France. Could we cancel. Well, hold on we shouldn’t need to, the phone will be fixed and we won’t need it until we get back on the Friday. They can test it then.
And so an arrangement was made that we would call them on our return on friday and they would come and test.
That evening we receive a text. “Work has been delayed”. No further explanation.
Friday afternoon we arrived home. No phone, red flashing light on the Livebox.
We call the provider. “Somebody will be there in an hour” Remember this is to test a line we already know is not working and hasn’t been fixed during the course of the week, so is unlikely to be fixed for the weekend.
“Ok “we say,” We are here waiting your arrival"
An hour later we receive a call.
“Hello, I am not able to make it today” well what did I expect it is friday afternoon, after all.
“Can we come on Monday”
“What time on Monday?”
“It can either be between 8.00am and 10am or between 10 am and midday”
We choose the 10am to midday slot, why get up early for somebody who might not even turn up.
Now in the past, all this would stress me out, “sod the internet” “chuck the lot out of the window” “go back to paper and pen, envelopes and licking stamps, after all its quicker to communicate that way” Your typical technophobe.
But today I have 4G and communicate less and less on a fixed line. I don’t get so stressed when the house internet fails. In fact I have thought about getting rid of the fixed line altogether and just using the smartphone.
The problem is the location in which I live. I live in a valley in a house with stone walls 2 thirds of a metre thick, and sometimes I need to walk around the house to get a 4G signal or even go out in the garden (not much fun if it rains)
I have decided, the despite my oft felt feelings that I want to throw the computer out of the window, I am not a technophobe. It’s the IT people who set procedures, stick to scripts whatever common sense might say, and who want to charge you for their failings. It is these people I have a phobia of, but the technology is on the front line and gets the blame.
As a note. If a French person has to ring Orange, young or old they will stress out, and the anger begins to rise before they pick up the phone.
By the same token Orange employees made up a large proportion of the suicides in France, at one time.
Maybe many of us who are what you call technophobic are not at all. Maybe we just know that if anything goes wrong, we are going to have to deal with IT people. I can even start to feel the hairs on my neck rise as I think about them.

France

gallois wrote:

I can even start to feel the hairs on my neck rise as I think about them.

I believe you. And I guess Orange is the only supplier in your area?

gallois wrote:

By the same token Orange employees made up a large proportion of the suicides in France, at one time.

Youch. And no union or anyone rises hell about this? This is totally unacceptable.

As you say you have 4G, hmm, maybe you want to pick up a mobile hotspot with a simcard inside (possibly as part of your current subscription) and place it high enough in your home so it has undisturbed access, then if necessary put 1-2 repeaters in the house? Some of those have routers integrated so you could hook up your home PC as well (or get a USB wlan receiver for those which don’t have).

That is what I have as a backup. It works well enough in such cases, as long as there are not more than about 4-5 devices coupled to it.

They are not that expensive, eg. the TP-Link M7350 is fully LTE capable and costs about 60 Euros. Mine are older Huawai devices also supports LTE but which are 300 Mbps only, but it works just fine with me. (Huawai E5786). You can find such older models on Ebay or facebook market place.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Quite a lot of B&B establishments have a 4G to WIFI box, for the “free WIFI” they advertise. Saves the rental of a phone line. They usually throttle the speed however. But it does suggest that finally there are deals in France today for “unlimited” 4G.

Also a lot of “modern people” don’t have a phone line and live just on their mobile phone, or if they have a phone line (for ADSL) they have no idea what the number is. I find this development quite surprising because “living with just a phone” is a torture, when it comes to doing so many things.

The only way to get really reliable internet is over fibre going all the way to the premises and this is the realisation here in the UK, with BT trying to move everyone to VOIP but they can’t do it until they roll out fibre everywhere. Those who move to VOIP earlier just tear their hair out, with the data connection breaking every time there has been heavy rain.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

@Peter fibre is in to a lot of places in the region, especially the towns, but even some small villages. I would love the fibre but as our line currently only serves us I can’t see it happening unless its part of a scheme that joins up 2 small villages.
@Mooney_Driver “Orange” is not the only service provider but it is the owner of the network, what was once called France Telecom.
All providers now offer fibre optic, but it is a little disingenuous as they are only really offering fibre to the house boundary, where you pick up the Orange/France Telecom non fibre network which is getting regularly destroyed by large tractors.
Bouyges do offer a package which includes either a 4G phone delivered to your door when you report a fault, which you use as you do your fixed phone, or a router which connects to 4G.
We were not eligable last time I looked for the router as 4G masts were not prevalent enough to provide a secure signal. Also I had my mobile phone through Bouyges for some years but the “espace client” section of their website went down some years ago. It was great for updating your subscription etc and allowed discounts. Once they lost that you were going into the shop where the packages cost more or on the phone, and if you have to stand by the road in order to make a call, dealing with a call centre whilst the occasional large tractor or noisy moped passes (its sods law that this will happen. A normally quiet road turns into a motorway as soon as you need to talk to someone in a call centre). Why a high tech phone company could not get their client space up and running properly for over a year beats me.
I will certainly look again at this as well as the other 4G router methods you suggest.
Thanks all

France

Sod’s law will do that.

I live within 3 minutes of Zurich airport, in a village full of rather well to do folks up the hill (we live just below the larger estate quarter in a terraced house). Yet there is practically no mobile reception at all, in my house just in one corner of it. That obviously is where I put the hotspot when the need arises.

For mobile coms we have to use Wlan calling throughout the house.

I could do what most around here do and blame the phone companies. Well, I won’t. The reason we have no nodes in this rather upscale village is that nobody will allow masts to be built in their neighbourhood. So we have two nodes which we can reach, one at the airport and the other near Buelach, both of which are not line of sight or just very barely, allowing a connection with as I am watching -140db. In the one corner of the house (my bedroom) where I do get a decent connection, it is -112 db

So here we are: 21st century, mobile phones which have the computing power of a mission control computer at Houston in the 1970ties (I know I know) but from pretty decent connections in the 1990ties over our home phones and even the old GPRS nodes we are back to shouting “Hello, can you hear me? Better now?” all the time in our own home while chasing from one spot to the other to catch the best available signal or while wondering whether Skype, Whatsapp, Messenger or Viber will provide the best connection today.

Why?

Because people want to be online all the time but won’t allow the infrastructure to be built in their own backyard. NIMBY crowd all over. The fact that they carry sometimes 3-4 devices which radiate more than any antenna they can see will reach them is totally beyond them or they simply don’t care. One idiot like that told me with a straight face: Well, I have to carry my phone, but I do not have to accept the antenna.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

MD that about sums it up, except that here they have stuck several wind turbines on the hills, opposed by many. But business and politicians who are sometimes the same people, prevailed.
But surely common sense would allow some sort of open communication system/hotspot attached to these if only to send back information such as the light bulb on top warning pilots at the local airfield of the obstacle has failed and the bulb needes replacing.
Instead the pilot reports the problem to the DGAC who then insists that something is done urgently. And to be fair it is. Otherwise the turbine has to come down. You couldn’t make it up.
By the way Orange technician just arrived, bang on time, to be fair with a text notification 25minutes in advance of arrival.
The test took all of 30 seconds and he got back in his cherry picker and went to see if he can find the problem up the road. Procedures bah.

France

gallois wrote:

By the way Orange technician just arrived, bang on time, to be fair with a text notification 25minutes in advance of arrival.

I have to say the same for the UPC cablecom guys here. They are first rate. I’ve had one outage on a Saturday night, managed to call the 24 hour help line and they asked if the technician should come now or on Monday. I said now. He arrived Saturday 2230 (about 1 hr after the call) and got the problem solved by 2400. Then they came back on Monday to make sure and to do permanent work.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Wow MD, that’s what I call service. We don’t have a 24hr hotline its all normal working days.
The technician has just returned and all is working well, yippee. Nice man and I think embarrassed by the situation his managers put him in. He made no comment on why things had to be done the way they are done.

France

gallois wrote:

He made no comment on why things had to be done the way they are done.

They know better :)

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Since this has turned into an Orange thread… @gallois must be unlucky. We have Orange at three residences, two fibre in Nice, one really feeble ADSL on the Atlantic Coast. Plus three mobile devices. I get nearly 1Gb in Nice on the fibre. Their retail service, for example when we arrived in France and needed two new phones quickly, was excellent. We had a problem with the Livebox (customer premise box) in Nice. They sent us a new one within two days, and in the meantime upped the data limit on our mobiles to something crazy high., so we could just work tethered. All done by chat late at night, with almost no waiting.

Here in Hossegor the ADSL is pathetic – 5 Mb on a good day. But I can get a lot more on the 4G wireless, so when I do a big download (e.g. Foreflight update or a new app) I just turn off Wifi on the phone or iPad.

LFMD, France
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