oh dear. this post shall, alas, be seen by some as quite the moan and groan. or whine, look you see. it is all with fairly good reason, i believe. that said, if you by any chance you are here for confirmation, if not outright affirmation, that EE are a bunch of f*****g useless ****s (as in a real shower of sh!t), well, then, you might well enjoy this one.
under no circumstances at all would i willingly have made use of EE. several years ago i was a pretty much content (as in no issues) customer of a phone network called Orange, for they were the only ones that offered packages (so i was told) for BlackBerry phones. you know, proper secure phones before everyone got all excited about "touch screen" and so Android and Apple. anyway, they got bought by EE, so i "had" to change to them, and for several months (!) they made a right mess of my account.
moving to the present day (the here and now) and i have been a very happy customer (for internet) with someone called PlusNet (or similar). in all of the time north of five (5) years in my era of exile i only ever had one (1) issue, and that was resolved within a ten (10) minute call. and then, in technical terms, something something something, telephone lines being deactivated, something something something, the only way to retain the internet connectivity as i need it is to move to EE who(m) is owned by the same people anyway. fine, i said. well, no, obviously, as much as a complete sack (or shower) of sh!t i knew EE to be, i trusted PlusNet. them saying it was a straightforward switch was good enough.
not so, of course. above is an image of my new EE "router" that does not actually "route" or whatever it is supposed to do (connect to the internet, perhaps). don't be fooled by the blue light you can see, for it really is a case of lights on, no one home. or not connected. actually, they get really p!ssed if you call it a blue light. the staff have to call it an aqua one, and they get in trouble if they don't call it that. further they have to correct you on the shade. how lovely that they have a chap who is clearly good with colours, and probably a friend of Dorothy, so high up. oh, if only they were quite so interested in matters such as the service they are supposed to provide.
anyway, at first, it seemed (appeared) to be relatively painless. i kept getting updates on my shiny new, pastel black router, and could even arrange for it to be sent to one of them "delivery box" things. when it landed i fetched it and left it sat in the box until such time as they told me it was ready to go, or if you so wish ready to rock and roll.
the day dawned that they said my services would go active. i got this text at 12:32pm (as in nearly half past noon) whilst out at verk. lovely, i said to myself, will sort it out when home and what have you.
gave this performance (or what have you) a couple of hours and went "no, something is busted" and called EE. whereas i did not know it then, what happened was i got (of course) fobbed off. they assured me that the services would not be "proper fully on" until 11:59pm, or if you will a minute before midnight. as i could recall them saying something (vaguely) like that i went fair enough, but did ask them to explain how the statement "it's go time - your broadband service is up and running" was meant to be interpreted as "no it is not". they had no answer.
on to the next day, then, and guess what. if you guessed that it was still going from a blue ("aqua") light to a deeply unpleasant flashing orange one, you are correct. here is some video of it.
presently, then, i have two (2) pieces of sh!t from EE, with neither of them having any inclination or interest at all in connecting to the internet. for some reason they are now sending a third (3rd), which for poetics i am inclined to call a third turd from them. by the way, it was a lovely touch of them to try and sell me a different service during the call, one which would have cost double what i am already paying for not getting with no assurance it would work, since they have to fix that which they have busted first. which is only going to potentially happen in a week or so.
further they also sent me a bill for my direct debit, which included a £30 "delivery" and/or "connection" fee. a fee i was assured, and they record the calls, would be waived, as it was an enforced change, for there was no f*****g way i would have knowingly and willingly chosen EE.
yes, then, i called once again, mostly to ask what (the f***), exactly, they were doing charging me for something they unequivocally said i would not be charged for, but also to mention that the connection was still not working. obviously they were not interested in discussing the incorrect charge, just all excited about how it (the internet) wasn't working. cutting some of the fat for you and they said they would send an engineer out "as soon as possible", which was a trifle tricky with my verk requirements. surprisingly they were somewhat (at least partially) sympathetic to news that i might have had to get an arm amputated on the Saturday morning, so arranged for a chap to come out Saturday afternoon. with the requisite assurances that he would totes mend it, which of course turned out to be bullsh!t.
exactly how well did the engineer visit go? not. i spent somewhere close to 2 (two) hours on the phone to some particularly useless b@st@rds at EE on Saturday night, gave it a rest on Sunday and then, mostly because of the right f*****g mess the useless ones made on Saturday, spent even longer on the phone to them on Monday night. observe the call duration time on the below screenshot.
what the engineer did was (more or less) exactly what they had me do. you know, the usual sh!t of switch it off and then back on, unplug it, plug it back in and reset it. so he came out to do what i had gone done and agreed there was an issue. apparently, in the name of efficiency, they have to have one of their engineers come and do this before they can "escalate" it to the tw@ts at "Open Reach", for the issue is their cables and they need to fix it. these would be the cables that worked perfectly fine for north of five years before they "made a change" to switch to EE.
i am going to trim some fat (waffle). surprisingly the useless b@stards i spoke to Saturday were not entirely so, for they managed (somehow) to arrange for a "4G mini hub" to be sent and delivered on Monday as an "interim" solution. alas, it turned up with no ethernet (no idea how you pronounce it either) ports, so i cannot connect my verk stuff, and it was not activated. so, i called asking how (exactly) i connected it to the pastel black router so i could do what i needed with the internet, and also could they make it work.
no and (indeed) no. at first they claimed it would "only" activate on Wednesday. i asked them what was the point of sending it as an "interim" and (admittedly impressively quick) solution if it was not going to work for 48 hours. this i likened to seeing someone on fire, presenting them with a fire extinguisher and assuring them not to worry, i would be back in a couple of days to fill that up for them. much of the eventually north of three (3) hour phone call was spent breaking them down until they confessed yes, they had sent me a dud "4g mini hub". brilliant.
how and i uploading (publishing) this? they have given me 250GB of data on my phone and shown me the magic of "tethering" my phone to my PC. no use for the verk device i really (urgently) need to connect, so they are still going to be paying me daily compensation, but it will do for now.
every time i call EE (and this is far too frequently) i get told they are the UK's "best" or "leading" network. i truly fear for who(m)ever uses the second place one in that race, presumably their means of connecting to the internet involves sh!tting in your own hands and then clapping. which, on the basis of my experiences, might be more effective than what EE offers.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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