Sorting out the phone, still

Another strange thing happened today also, all this before 10am.

Our phone line rental is with KPN (govt owned phone coy), and the call costs are expensive, probably the most expensive of all the providers. Stuart had signed us up with another provider (Pretium) for cheaper international calls. When we signed at KPN, I wanted to find a package that offered better deals on calls etc, the funny and very dutch part is that we had to subscribe to a certain package until they had assessed and decided what our call patterns are like – we must wait for three months to change packages (we were on belbudget, the cheapest). So, when we called Pretium to find out when our new call costs would be active from, they said that we could not use them on the current KPN package, apparently, KPN have blocked every provider for providing cheap calls on the belbudget packages, we must upgrade to belbasis (at another Euro5 per month) to get cheap calls. Grrrrr. Pretium advised that as soon as KPN have upgraded, we can start using Pretium but he cautioned to do it as soon as possible as they take ages – 10 days to do this simple function.

So I called KPN and upgraded the package. It gets worse, the customer chicky said that the details were updated and I thanked her and asked when it will be active, remember the 10 day conversation. She said not before 1st February 2005! I was so shocked and asked her what they could possibly be doing that they needed that long when she had just updated the information while I talked with her. Again, being dutch customer service, the answer was “this is the time it will take”, end of conversation. I called Pretium to advise them that I had upgraded and when it would be active and even they were shocked. So, now we will wait until Feb to make our cheap calls.