The end of the saga of getting internet

So, what’s happened in the saga of the internet at Bodmon Cottage (as named by my housemates, I don’t quite understand...) since my last post?

TalkTalk sent another engineer round who turned up and said that he couldn’t put the phone line in as the scaffolding wasn’t down yet. This was the problem 5 weeks beforehand, and it was sorted when the landlord said we could just put the phoneline on the corner of the house next door and run it across to our, which happened 2 weeks before. The phone line was in, we had the modem, we just needed them to make the phone line work... except they couldn’t because there was no dial tone and apparently there was a fault underneath the telegraph pole that they needed to send someone else out to fix. They said someone would be round on Saturday, but they didn’t know if it would be the next Saturday coming or the Saturday that had just been. Nightmare.

I went to Devon the weekend after this happened, and decided I’d had enough so gave in and bought a wireless internet dongle to use while I was there and when I got home. Except the absolutely typical thing happened, and I got home on Sunday afternoon only for someone to come round on Monday evening and make the internet work. Slightly annoying after I’d just paid £30 for the dongle, but hey ho.

So, exactly 11 weeks after we lost internet, we got it again. I never would have imagined how much it would impact my life, through little things having to plan my life around when I could get internet so I could send emails or make sure I’d downloaded all the papers I needed for lectures. And as sad as it sounds, after I’d watched through all my DVDs and endless episodes of Monty Python and read a couple of books I started getting slightly bored of not being able to relax and browse the internet in the evenings.

But now everything’s back to normal, and I’m so glad because it makes everything so much easier, and if I’d been stuck with no internet next term would have been a nightmare!

I've got a lot more posts planned soon - I miss having the freedom of being able to post when I want so I'm going to try and make up for that!

Internetless

About 6 weeks ago, I came home after being at Steves for a few days to find that the internet in my house (which I may or may not have been borrowing from the uni building next door...) was no longer working.

I spoke to the uni IT people asking when it would be working again, and they told me it wouldn't be. Great. But other than this meaning I would have to pay for internet, I didn't really have a problem with it and thought I could sort out a connection in the house within a couple of days.

I had a look round the house looking for the phone line points and found none. So I phoned my landlord... who said there is no phone line in the house. I'm sorry, what? Was this house built in the dark ages? Who doesn't even have a phone line these days?!

But my landlord said she would sort it, and she came round a couple of days later saying she'd sorted out the phone line and the internet, and an engineer would be round in about 3 weeks to sort it out. This was a bit rubbish, considering it had already been 2 weeks without internet by this point, but I assumed it would all get sorted on that date.

The date (on Monday) came and went, with no sign of the engineer. The internet service provider told us nothing and said someone would come round the next morning.

Tuesday morning came and went too with no sign of an engineer. We phoned the service provider who fed us some bullshit about it being BT's fault, not theres, and it would be 3 to 5 working days before they even looked at our case, then up to another 2 weeks before the phone line was installed. Cue me going into a rage. This rage was made worse by a BT engineer pulling up in our driveway... but not for us, for a house at the top of the drive. Arrgghhh.

But on Wednesday, an engineer turned up to install the phone line. Slightly odd. But as some scaffolding had gone up on the building next door (on Tuesday, after the engineer was originally due to come) it would be difficult to put the phone line in directly to our house so it would have to be attached to the house next door. This shouldn't have been a problem, as our landlord owns the house next door too, but I couldn't get hold of my landlord to find out if this was ok. So I had to say bye bye to the engineer and bye bye to the prospect of getting internet again :(

I heard back from my landlord yesterday who said it was fine to put it on the house next door, but when I rang the service provider they said the earliest someone could come round is the 28th, another 2 weeks away. By that point we will have been internetless for almost 8 weeks. Bleh.

Sometimes I think life would be simpler if I lived in a shed haha.
Bring on the 28th when I can finally use the internet in bed again...

The never ending saga of my attempt to order from Threadless

Back in March, I placed an order for these...

... from Threadless, a US-based t-shirt site, hoping they would arrive before I left Cornwall for Easter. It said maximum 3 weeks delivery time, so I thought they would have plenty of time to get here.

Unfortunately, they didn't :(

4 days after I'd left, when I was in Cyprus, I got a text from one of my housemates saying that a card had come through the door for me from Royal Mail saying I had a fee to pay on a parcel. On top of the £38 or something I'd already spent on the shirts (yeah, I know, most expensive t-shirts ever), I now had a £15.35 customs and admin fee to pay for bringing them into the country. I was pretty miffed, but the t-shirts are cool and I'd been looking forward to getting them, so when I got back from Cyprus I paid the fee.

I then discovered that the delivery office only holds parcels for up to 3 weeks before returning them to sender...
It was the Easter holidays, so the house was empty.
Empty house means no one would be in to open the door for the delivery.
No one in to open the door means I'd have to wait until I get back to get the parcel from the delivery office.
I would only be getting back 3 and a half weeks after the card was left.

Argh!

Luckily another one of my housemates was already back, so she kindly went to try and collect the parcel from the delivery office for me...

... but when she got there they couldn't find the parcel. Erm, what?

So they took her number and details, but she got back to the house to find the parcel had already been delivered and as it didn't look very parcel-like she hadn't noticed and it had become buried under piles of stuff on the kitchen table.

Panic over, the t-shirts were safely in the house and ready to wear when I got back.

So I arrive back a week ago, plan on wearing one of the t-shirts the next day, and excitedly tear into the parcel to find...
Excuse me, but what's with the one on the right?! Where's the blue one I actually ordered?!
Mega disappointment right then.

From a little bit of noseying around on the Threadless site, I discovered that the t-shirt I'd received is called "Hibernate" and the one I'd ordered is called "Hibearnation". An easy mistake to make when packaging up orders I guess, but whoever was doing it should've noticed that the t-shirt on my invoice was described as jade in colour, but that one is clearly black. Sigh...

It's all been sorted now though, they're sending me the correct one free of charge and I get to keep the incorrect one (anyone want to buy it? :P).
Fingers crossed the right one turns up and there's no faffing around like last time!

I wouldn't say I'd never order from Threadless again, as it this kind of error could happen to anyone and the delay and the customs charges was nothing to do with them, but it's certainly made me hesitant to shop from foreign websites if this is the amount of hassle it causes!

Update: I've finally got the right t-shirt, wooo! It arrived a lot quicker than the first two (I'm guessing because it didn't get stopped by customs) and it fits perfectly. I'm a happy bunny now :D