First Post from here

Hello.

I come to you via umm.. purloined bandwidth. I've been using this connection because, until yesterday, the nice people at Bell couldn't provide us with, umm.. you know, phone service. Now, it would appear that the phone jack in this room is buggered and, honestly, I have no real idea where my Airport is. So thank you Mr/Mrs. Linksys owner who doesn't know how/care to lock down their wireless network. I really appreciate it.

The Move
It was fucking awful. Seriously. It started out well enough. Friday we got a bunch of stuff moved (Thanks Lea and (work)Natalie), bags and clothing etc. Saturday dawned with Lea and (girlfriend)Natalie coming over with (gf)Natalie's car and with my Dad doing the same. We got a huge amount more moved over and then in the afternoon the movers came. I was a mover for 3 summers. I've seen good movers and bad movers (hell, I've been both). These guys were fast, efficient, careful and not expensive (hourly rate of $90 is hard to beat on a weekend sadly).

So, so far everything sounds good, right? Yes indeed. But that's because you haven't realized that I haven't mentioned the kitchen yet. Or the other sources of picky shit that didn't' get packed. Or that the move stretched on into lateish Sunday afternoon for us. Or that if my Dad hadn't shown up that we would still have been moving on Monday.

The Aftermath
So now we are almost a week in from moving here, parts of the house are a few bags/boxes shy of being totally set up (living room/kitchen/our bedroom). Parts are a quick trip to IKEA away from being set up (our bedroom, Chris' office). Parts are a fucking disaster (dining room and my office). Parts are totally set up (umm.. oh, yes, Lucas' room).

Why Bell Can Kiss My Ass
So we get the Bell guy to come and install jacks on Saturday, the day of the move, because we want phone service right away. He comes, puts the jacks in and then has a hard time figuring out how to get the line into the house (this is not Bell's fault, just some asshole contractor cut the cable, pulled it and then sealed the hole during reno). I suggest the old, unused chiminey and all is good. Well, kind of. It seems that at the post our line is not there. It's someone else's number. So, he calls central, and they say they will take care of it, but he disconnects our line because he doesn't want us to be bothered by calls to whoever has the line.

Monday comes, they have our borrowed cell phone's number, and they don't call us, but they send a tech and are very angry we aren't there. Tuesday they send a tech. Who proceeds to just reconnect the line at the post. Same problem. Now we have an outbound line, but it belongs to Bureau en Gros (like Staples in the rest of North America). He can't fix this because the Bell computer system has crashed (this was system wide, I couldn't get our satellite TV system going either). Wednesday they send another tech, in the afternoon/evening and he finally fixes it.

It pisses me off because they continue to act as if there is no alternative to them. I could cancel my local phone service and get a cell from any number of other providers, I could get TV from a bunch of other people and I could get high speed internet from a number of other sources. Hell my dad(!!!) just switched his home service to another company... at no point in all of this did anyone even begin to say they were sorry. The reality is that bad shit happens with all companies, what separates the good from the bad is how they deal with the mistakes. Bell sucks at this.