I WENT through the life-denying process of renewing our wifi package last month.
I should have just cut out the middleman and trapped my finger in the door.
Is there any other domestic commodity that takes the full-on piss quite like wifi?
It seems to be the only household service making damn sure it takes your money while applying a laissez faire attitude as to whether or not you get the paid-for product.
Can you imagine phoning the waterboard to be told you now have to accept an intermittent stream from your taps at busy times?
Or the energy company saying a neighbour’s cooker is interfering with your gas supply – have you tried a different hob?
How about Netflix explaining an engineer is due in your area next week to address the ‘known problem’ preventing you from watching the end of Ozark?
Now you are concerned. Shit just got real. Nobody messes with your telly.
Calm down and please bear with us, sir. We are sorry to hear we’ve caused you to have a hernia.
For the record, wifi gripes were standard issue long before the end-of-days level of customer service now par for the course everywhere in the Covid era.
And let’s have it right – nobody is pretending those other mobs are not riddled with their own ridiculous customer-satisfaction crushing problems.
But they are not in wifi’s league. Not close.
I did a quick Google trawl on ridiculous explanations given by wifi companies for poor internet connections.
Here is what this fella was told: “The power grid in your area is fluctuating and dirty so it might just be a problem with provisioning your modem. Just give it a few minutes for the power to normalise.”
Somebody said that with a straight face, presumably.
Away from my hilarious (tedious you say?) commentary, there is a more serious point here.
For quite apart from wifi outages leaving your gamer offspring incandescent, or irritating your box-set fanatic spouse, many of us now rely on a solid connection to work from home.
You know, to pay the bills and such. Roof over your head, food and the like.
So how the cast of millions currently flogging wifi in this country feel it is acceptable to simply say, ‘you’ll just have to lump it, direct debit still due on the 5th’, is well beyond me.
As is how the government have not put in place better, more-effective regulation.
Apparently all wifi firms must be members of an Ofcom-approved Alternative Dispute Resolution scheme.
And once you have been fobbed off by a company’s brains-trust customer service department for long enough, you can kick your complaint up the chain to either CISAS or the Communications Ombudsman.
Three years, two marriages, 17 cases of wine and some new-found IBS later, somebody might even apologise and give you a voucher. For future wifi services.
You might already be aware, but there are loads of apps out there designed to check your wifi speeds, monitor its uptime and generally set your digital world to rights.
I do not know if any of them are any good. If you do, please let me know. *checks inbox for flood of spam*
Those of a certain vintage (like myself) have to acknowledge it has all come rather a long way since those screechy dial-up modem days.
But – in commercial terms – it just feels like promotional promises are just not being kept when it comes to uploads, downloads, bits and bites, and the general streams of piss-poor service.
And we have now all had quite enough of buffering circle man, as he is known in our house.
In case you are wondering, my ‘provider’ fixed my ‘issue’ by up-selling me on a ‘booster’. It is some sort of plug-in-the-wall pod intended to ‘improve’ my ‘network’.
That’s right, I had to pay more to ensure wifi I am already paying for actually works as originally advertised.
Beam me up, Scotty.
What’s that… you can’t because the Enterprise’s router is on the fritz?
Quelle surprise.