Why is it that whenever anybody needs to set up a new internet connection, it’s always a nightmare? Why can’t somebody just get it right without a customer service massive FAIL?  Having just moved in to a new flat, we decided to go with Talk Talk as they were reviewed as being the best, and were advertising a relatively cheap high-speed broadband deal.

Step 1: Telephone call 1 to order new TalkTalk Pro 24Meg unlimited package. Told we had to sign up for the Essentials package, & wait for connection before upgrading to Pro. Tried again to demand we get Pro to start with. Told no, but assured we could upgrade later. Informed of £60 phone line connection fee. OK, signed up.

Step 2: Wait 10 days for telephone line to be connected.

Step 3: Telephone call 2 to upgrade to TalkTalk Pro. Told that package is not available to new customers and is only available for Tiscali customers. I told them I was told on sign-up that I could have it. They said this was incorrect and no new customers could get the Pro unlimited package.

Step 4: Researched alternatives, decided on Virgin Media via cable. Customer service popup chat on their website did a check on our address and confirmed we could just order by post, modem delivered 19th December, no installation engineer required.

Step 5: Telephone call 3 to cancel TalkTalk. Told that TalkTalk Pro package WAS in fact available to new customers. They then did a check on our line and told us that our line wouldn’t handle that speed though, so we couldn’t get the Pro package after all. Asked to cancel. Man at cancellations department asked why, I explained, he was extremely rude to me, finally agreed to cancel my account and confirmed I would not be charged the £60 connection fee (because I was sold it on false information).

Step 6: Ordered Virgin account and home delivery for 19th December.

Step 7: Received email from Virgin saying actually we DID need an installation engineer and one wouldn’t be available until 4th January.

Step 8: Telephoned Virgin to check and they confirmed we did need an engineer, despite previously being told otherwise.

Step 9: TalkTalk decide to send me a welcome pack and modem.

Step 10: Telephone call 4 to try to cancel TalkTalk again. Told account had not been canceled previously. Nice lady this time on cancellations department agreed to cancel my account, but told me I would be charged the £60 connection fee unless I disputed it. Told I’d be sent a return envelope for the modem. Put through to disputes. Told my account hadn’t been charged YET, but would inevitably be charged, at which point I would have to call again to dispute and they would credit me the £60 back.

Step 11: Grabbed passing Virgin man and asked him to check our Virgin wall box thing, he agreed we didn’t actually need an installation engineer. But by this time it was Christmas and too late to get a delivery by post.

Step 12: Virgin engineer arrived on time to PLUG IN modem for us. Thanks for that. That cost me £20 more than doing it myself. Anyway, we’ve now got internet (woo!) and it seems decently fast at a real speed of approx. 17Mb/s.

Really. It really shouldn’t be that complicated to get a new internet connection! And these companies should start hiring customer service people who get their facts right! Gggrrrrah!

I’m a bit late on the ball, but it’s still an interesting read – I’ve finally got around to adding my ex-colleague Paul Collins’ blog to my blogroll. He left work to go on a big trip to the Copenhagen summit, and has done a really nice job of documenting the experience alongside some interesting insights. It’s also a beautiful site which isn’t surprising since his day job is being a front-end web developer with pretty good design skills as it happens! So yeah, go and check out Climate Change Stuff.

I’m just claiming this URL for Technorati: 8K7KG34U9G7J

So I finally did it. I moved my blog from Wordpress.com to Bethgranter.com (which was embarrasingly out of date due to being hard coded) using the Wordpress.org CMS. Picked a new theme. Set the front page to a single Page rather than latest Posts (good or bad idea? Comments please). Imported all my content and your comments. BUT…

My old blog at Wordpress.com has a bunch of incoming links from various places from over the years, providing lots of lovely Google Juice. Obviously the new site doesn’t (yet). I can’t do any automatic redirecting from Wordpress.com because it’s hosted there and they don’t allow it (for free… there may be a paid option, not sure). So I’ve just put a big fat ‘This blog has moved to bethgranter.com’ message in the navigation and on the homepage.

However, when people go direct to a specific article, which they normally do, via Google searches or inbound links, they still get the content they wanted, so have no reason to go through to my new site. If I were to delete all my old posts, people coming via referring links to posts would be faced with a ‘page not found’ message (albeit provided in a friendly Wordpress tone of voice) with the ‘this blog has moved to bethgranter.com’ message in the header and sidebar.  And Google would recognise the bethgranter.com content as the priority. Although without those inbound links those good (moved) posts would have no Google Juice, so I’d get less traffic. Today so far my blog at Wordpress.com had 68 visitors. This one at Bethgranter.com had 17, of which 5 were from the old blog. I guess that’s not bad considering I only put the blog on Bethgranter.com 48 hours ago. So yeah, the question is:

Should I delete my old juiced up blog posts from Wordpress.com now they are on Bethgranter.com?!

Here's a cool looking kid who doesn't know what to do either. Photo by yamagatacamille.