Telecom Italia: 10, Gillian: 0
Here’s a little-known fact about me: I need the Internet to survive. Really. I will die without it.
Sure, unplugging for a weekend away or a long vacation is a fabulous idea and I’m happy to indulge when I can, but the day-to-day reality is that I need to be online. I can’t do most of my work without Internet access, plus how else will I be able to find answers to my very important questions, such as “where can you buy hops in Naples?” and “why did Scarlett Johansson trade in Ryan Reynolds for Sean Penn?”
Telecom Italia either doesn’t understand this about me, or it just doesn’t care. I suspect it’s the latter. Our Internet is a fickle wench that will work like a dream for a week straight and then, without warning, simply stop and give me the silent treatment for hours or days or weeks. I beg, I plead, I apologize, I promise to fix whatever it is that I did wrong to make her so mad (to which she replies, “Well, if you don’t know already…”).
It is infuriating. I hate her, yet I need her. For example, this was my Friday morning last week.
8:45 I’m about to upload some client work and send some emails. The wireless goes out. This is not the first time this has happened, but occasionally the wifi will stop working and the Ethernet will still function. Not this time.
8:46-8:59 Cursing. Tinkering. Cursing.
9:00-9:01 I leave the first of what’s sure to be many irritated messages on the Telecom Italia bilingual helpline (I so wish my Italian were proficient enough to communicate my disdain and rage, but somehow “I am not content” and “I do not like this not function, fix now” doesn’t really cut it).
9:02-9:05 I try 10 more ways to make the Internet work. Willing it to work is one of them.
9:06-9:08 More cursing. I make sure to include some Italian words.
9:09-9:30 I run out of bad words I know in other languages, so I look for something to do offline. I read a few magazine articles and a chapter of a book I’m almost finished with. I check the modem and router every few minutes to see if the lights are on. No dice.
9:31-10:59 I’m booooored.
11:00-11:02 Telecom Italia actually calls me back, which is highly unusual. The nice lady tells me Monday is an Italian holiday and the soonest they can send a technician out is Tuesday morning. FINE.
11:03-1:00 I pay too much for a day of terrible Internet access, via my USB Internet key from Vodafone. I barely get everything done that I need to before it gets tired and stops loading pages.
Update: Our wonderful neighbor kindly gave us the password to his wifi so I could use it as a back-up when ours misbehaves.
Our Internet started working again on Friday evening and continued to do so throughout the weekend. Tuesday morning, around the time the technician was supposed to stop by, a rep from Telecom Italia called and said, “It appears that your Internet is working again. Is this correct?” I said, “Yes, it is working for the moment…” and she said she was canceling my appointment and hung up.
An hour later, the Internet shut down again. You’re dead to me, Telecom Italia.
5 comments
HA!
Sorry to hear about your troubs with the Internets. Are you running DSL or Fiber? I hope in the future it can always be fixed by unplugging and plugging back in!
Best,
dk
Haha, thanks, DK. I hope my gypsy magic/restarting the router works in the future, too. We have ADSL, but the technician explained to me that sometimes the power center in our town will have problems and just stop working. For days, apparently. La dolce vita is so much more dolce with working Internets! Is your connection in Spain pretty good?
I am a Navy wife as well…and my husband just received orders for Naples. We will be arriving during September. We have a lot of things to do before then :) I am super excited and we are both looking forward to this amazing opportunity. If you have any advice or recommendations about living it Italy that would be great!
Love your blog…look forward to following it and seeing all we have to look forward to:)
Hey Gill,
Yea, you asked me that question a long time ago and I didn’t get the notification….Anyhoo, in short, yes. When we got here and I was still working for my company in CA we got ADSL and the upload was not fast enough to run the VPN software to get into my server. So, we quickly changed and luckily we are in an area that is cable capable. We have cable and our internet is quite fast and quite robust (toca madera) and we also told them we were a business so we have 24h free help. We pay a bit more but save on headaches for we, like you, will wither and die without connectivity.
Besos!
DK, no worries and thanks! Man, I am jealous of your good Internet. I remember vaguely what that was like… we’re trying to resolve our issues with Telecom Italia or we’re going to have to go through the hassle of switching providers.
Amanda, thanks for the kind words and for following the blog! That’s awesome that you and your husband will be moving out to Naples in September. Let me know when you get out here :) They lifted the mandatory base housing policy they had going for awhile (we narrowly missed having to live on base), so my recommendation is to live somewhere out in town. It’s tough sometimes (ahem, Telecom Italia), but it’s totally worth it. Centro Italiano is awesome for language lessons in downtown Naples. I keep meaning to write a “moving to Naples 101” post for Navy folks – maybe this will be good motivation. Good luck, and let me know if I can help.