What The Butler Saw

This has been one of those weeks where all the most boring practical elements that support life have got in a muddle. First it was the saga of the Sky engineer, and really that was rather minor compared to all the other stuff that has followed.

We had an email from our building insurers about cutting down a sycamore tree in our garden which is causing terrible subsidence through our house. The insurers said it will cost £6000 (yes, thousand) to cut it down (because the tree is technically owned by Network Rail, who have to oversee the tree surgeons as we live by a railway line). They also said our insurance may not cover this cost. And they said any costs they do pick up, we have to pay for upfront anyway. Oh, and then they told us they won't be insuring us anymore in future (could this have anything to do with the fact we have dared to claim on our subsidence policy?) Calling to explain that it is seriously impossible for us to pay £6000, whether or not it is covered and reimbursed, to have a tree cut down (and unfair, because we are meant to be covered for subsidence), I was told our insurance contact is on holiday for two weeks! So we and our neighbours are all quietly panicking.

But even that is nothing compared to the nightmare I've had as a customer of the ISP PlusNet this week. I stopped receiving emails on Monday and, although I am now seemingly almost back to normal, some emails are still taking hours to days to arrive and my email keeps timing out. This is obviously catastrophic when you've got important and urgent emails coming through.

You'd think that in this situation PlusNet would be 'all hands on deck' supporting and reassuring its customers, but, well, that's not what I've experienced. I've spent about an hour and a half trying to get through to someone there on the phone, and either found myself in interminable queues, or led through a maze of pre-recorded options and then brusquely cut off by some implacable women's voice telling me to logon to their website. As if I haven't been monitoring the website's service status information every ten minutes for the last two days! As if I haven't sent online questions to the technical support team which have gone resoundingly unanswered (typical response: Dear Ms G., Please refer to our website's service status information, Regards, XX').

It's like, fine, PlusNet, leave your customers with no email for two days, no problem. Don't bother apologising to them, answering your phones or responding fairly to their queries. No email? No human being you can get through to? What's the problem!

I just want my lost emails back and then I'm gonna probably leave PlusNet for good. They used to be a really good ISP with reasonable customer service, but recently it's gone so downhill.

Apart from this, everything's dandy though.