Going cold turkey. Or cold firefox.

• By Alison
• 27 January, 2010
• 19 Comments

I’ve just spent 2 days without the internet, because BT broke some fancy bit of equipment in a deep dark hole somewhere in Croydon. Or Chichester. Or maybe in Siberia, who cares. The point is, that despite there being several hundred of us on different ISPs without the internet, it took BT over a day to admit that it was their fault.

So I had find things to do that were not internet related. For TWO DAYS. This ranks high up on the horrible chart. In fact, it’s right up there with going without coffee. Almost. There is nothing that really ranks as high as coffee. But it was pretty painful overall.

You probably think this post is going to be all about how rewarding I found that time. How I reconnected with nature, found my inner self, discovered the joy of just being me, caught up with reading, wrote my novel or just enjoyed the peace of sitting in the sun and doing nothing.

Not a pinch.

For a start, we haven’t seen sun here since 1967. I am not going outside because it’s either wet or freezing or both and the back yard is a quagmire of dirt with the occasional lottery win of fox poo.

I don’t knit. Not even a teacosy.

I have a tendancy to fart and ruin the moment while meditating, so there is no peace to be had.

I have a cold and feel grumpy, and besides – I need to use IMDB.com in order to look up who on earth that young man in Glee is, and what’s the ditzy red haired actress’s name who was also in Ugly Betty.

I might even need to look up what I can do with fennel.

I have pressing needs.

And more importantly – I work for a living. My working day revolves around my kids school hours. I drop them off at school. I work. I stop work. I pick them up from school.

I have 6 hours in which to fit in my work, and lets face it – as a web designer there’s going to be a high percentage of work that relies on the internet connection being up. Up as in functional. Up as in “hello internet, are you there?” “Why yes, I am. I live to serve.”

What I got was “hello internet… hello?” “The internet is not available. Please leave a message after the beep. Beeeeeeeeeep… no, just joking. You can frick right off.“

I rang my ISP. 400 other customers rang my ISP. My ISP looked into it and lay the blame at BT’s door. BT on the other hand refused to open the door. I guess they expected that the flaming bag was really full of dogshit. Yes it really was. But it was BTs dogshit in the first place.

My ISP very kindly raised a fault report for me. And they very kindly sent me a message about it.

Via email.

And in that email they gave me a very handy link to a webpage where all updates to my fault would be posted.

That would be on the internet, access to which would be necessary in order to see the updates.

Now I’m lucky, I have a way to access the internet that doesn’t involve my computer. But the more I use my iPhone to access the internet without my wifi connection, the bigger my phone bill is going to end up. So I don’t want to do that too often. I used it solely to send and receive emails to my clients. I avoided all other apps that might try and access the internet.

And yet… can you even guess what one app I did use in my isolation?

Yes, gentle reader. Despite posting about how pointless twitter is, I used it to give myself the illusion I was still in touch with unreality.

And here’s the strange thing.

I twittered about my internet outage, uttered the mere acronym of BT, and moments later @btcare was asking if they could help.

How weird is that?

They told me to email them and they’d look into it.

So I did.

But they didn’t.

I have a theory about this. I think that some companies think that it’s good PR to have lovely little helpful messages out in public showing how “hip” and “with it” they are.

See that little juxtaposition there? They are “with it” and I am “without”. I slay myself.

Here is how my twitter conversation with @btcare started:

I won’t bore you with the rest, suffice to say that I emailed bt as instructed and received no reply. The next morning I tweeted about it and up popped @btcare again – telling me to email him.

Erm… nope. Not again!

He also pointed out that I could get all my updates from the BT status webpage. Again with the webpages. Isn’t there some vital flaw in the idea of keeping people updated about their lack of internet access with messages posted on the internet??

It’s like telling people that the ferry times and service alerts are posted at their destination. Um – useful much?

According to my ISP (who I rang on the telly phone) BT finally admitted it was their fault at 1pm today. And at 2pm it was fixed. I spent a glorious hour sending emails and catching up with work, then I had to pick up the kids from school.

When I got home, the internet was gone again. It’s kind of like snuffaluffagus isn’t it. When he was still an invisible friend that is. Maybe not quite as hairy.

This time my ISP helpline was swamped. I was in a queue for a long time, and when I got through I found out why. This time 3000 of their customers were without internet. It was a different fault, but it was still BT’s fault.

Numbers maketh the man however – with 3000 customers from one single ISP, BT fixed this one in two hours. Funny that. They must have felt like they got a shot up the rear from Oscar the Grouch.

And I’m back. It’s a kind of special internet present to all of you.

Like digital herpes.