I signed up with Tiscali for DSL way back in 2007-ish.

Phone stayed with Telekom

Tiscali got swallowed by Freenet.

At some stage, I migrated my voice traffic to Freenet.

Freenet got swallowed by 1&1.

Abjucted

Didn’t have any dealings with them, apart from repelling occasional attempts that I should pay more for the same service.

“A couple of weeks ago, my old Freenet Samsung router got zapped in an electrical storm. DSL still worked, phone line went “Ksssshhhksssshhwangwangkpowkshhhhh” and Marcus, my local sparky, reckoned that the VOIP board was stuffed.

Covered by insurance.

Bought a new one. WiFi. Aerials. Flashing lights. The whole deal.

Tried to connect to 1&1’s server and it turns out that there’s something wrong with the PIN/password combination.

Get their Call Centre and ask them to reset my password.

You’d have thought that I’d stuck my hand up her skirt.

“We can’t do THAT and we can’t confirm your PASSWORD! What we’ll do is send you your log-on credentials by mail.”

That was 12 days ago.

Sane promise 8 days ago.

Same promise 5 days ago.

In the meantime, someone at 1&1 changed some settings, so that instead of having no phone, I no longer have DSL connectivity either

The guy I spoke to yesterday said that he “guaranteed that I would have my log-on credentials by tomorrow” and that apart from that, he couldn’t help me.

(We’re up to about an hour and a half mobile phone calls at €0.30 a minute)

Neither can their PR department-run blog – “Wait until the end of the week and we’ll then see what we can do”

Einstein said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results..

I’m not sure which category to set – Geriatric rants/WTF/Bastards.

Probably all three, come to think of it….