Thoughts and not beliefs, with the occasional wild speculation
After setting up a place where stray thoughts can be collected and contemplated, they have all of a sudden vanished.
Therefore the secret to vibrant contemplation is never to try and write it down. Just as the secret to good health is to always consult your doctor.
Il Lungomare Trieste è una dei grandi attrazioni di Salerno. Sia per i Salernitani e per i visitatore. Naturalmente, se si vuole sperimentare il piacere del lungomare si deve camminare lungo di essa. Ecco il problema. Durante il giorno c’è il sole – naturalmente. E durante l’estate il sole è caldo – naturalmente. Quelli che hanno desiderio fare una passeggiata hanno bisogno della ombra – naturalmente. Quindi, la cosa più importante per il comune fare durante l’alta estate è di tagliare i lati e cime degli alberi ed eliminare l’ombra – naturalmente. È logico.
Va bene. Questo non sia un modo costruttivo di chiedere perché stanno eliminando l’unico rifugio dal sole sul lungomare. Meglio ipotizzare che c’è un motivo ragionevole. Sarebbe possibile che qualcuno fornisce quella ragione?
Mr Peev Edoff
United Kingdom and long-time visitor to Salerno
Mi ha datto un numero celulare che, quando l’ho chiamato nessuno rispondeva per 10 minuti in piu’. Ovviamente non si puo’ aspettare cosi tanto con un numero cellulare, e ho richiamato Tre numero verde. “Scusami”, ho detto, “ma nessuno di questi metodi di contatto funzionono! ne linternet, ne telefono ne fax! Come posso rinuovare le mie dettaglie carta di credito?” La ragazza disse “non posso aiutarla perche questo numero e’ per problemi technici, non per problemi con pagamento.”
Dopo qualche minuti di litiggio (immaginate, litiggio tra un cliente ed un customer service provider!!), la ragazza chiude telefono in faccia!!
Brava a lei e bravo a Tre.
Perche’?
Perche’ non c’e’ contabilita’ sulla rsiponsibilita’. Ogni uno che lavora al customer service pensa che sta lavorando autonomamente, senza regole e senza coordinamento. Per loro, e’ troppo lavoro trovare un soluzione per un cliente ed invece e’ piu facile chiudere telefono.
Bandits! But worst of all… dishonest, incompetent and lazy bandits!
No wonder Italy is in a lot of trouble.
Ovviamente, il link NON FUNZIONE!
http://portale3.tre.it/133/op/id/485
Bravo Tre.
Ho Telefonato customer service. Mi hano datto un numero fax e…il numero no funzione!!
Bravo to all the idioti at Tre Italia!
Another waste of time.
Certainly the world will not be much different if these villages eventually die out. But it could be different if they live. A way of life exists there that has existed for centuries, and some villages people still speak dialects that are a mixture of Ancient Greek and Albanian.
It is very sad, and the only hope is that the people of Cilento realise that they must do something drastic to avert their extinction.
Here we are…wasting time. Yet again. And it’s all because the service provided by Tre Italia mobile internet is either incompetent or deliberately inferior so as to make the customer pay more. One cannot help side with the latter judgment.
So what is it this time?
Whilst surfing in an area where Tre’s reception is usually very good, the network switched from Tre Italia to “altre operatore” This basically means that you move out of the free usage zone withing your monthly plan and into the expensive zone of 60 cents per MB. I only found this out because the local meter “advised” me of 95% usage.
But that was the first i knew of it…when i had already used 25MB under copertura altre operatore. Besides that, the local meter is hopelessly inaccurate. I had it set to advise me at 1MB usage. Instead, it went 24MB passed that setting before it alerted me to the usage outside of Tre’s coverage.
I now face an extra charge of 41 Euro on my bill. This is outrageous and if it is not incompetence then it is theft.
These are the reasons for this dire state of affairs:
The local metering is hopelessly inaccurate
A user is NOT advised that the network switches from Tre to Altre operatore. Tre claims that this is so that the user can “enjoy” seamless surfing without interruption. One rather thinks that the user enjoys it less when he receives his bill. There should be a warning telling the user that he is about to switch networks, so that he can choose whether or not to pay for access.
And as always, to get some redress on the matter, one has to waste time writing faxes, explaining what happened and then there is little or no chance of getting satisfaction. Why? because Tre will not take responsibility. This is unethical if not downright wrong. Tre refuses to recognise that these out of quota uses would not occur if the user was given better tools for controlling usage.
Something needs to be done about this. The user cannot continue to be treated in this unethical manner especially when it costs money.
It has been six weeks since Angela woke to the shock of the month. Logging on to check her Internet usage with Tre mobile Internet one morning, she discovered she had run up a bill of €131, way in excess of her 19 Euro monthly flat rate. Usually careful to frequently check her usage, she struggled to remember how she could have run up such a bill.
Angela, who lives in Salerno, is one of an increasing number of business people who use Tre’s USIM data card for HDSP mobile Internet access. For 19 Euro a month she receives 5GB of traffic (total, for both up and down), at speeds of around 80Kbps, which, as mobile Internet goes, isn’t bad. However, Tre charges 20 cents per megabyte if you exceed your usage quota, which wouldn’t be so bad if you actually knew what your usage was.
To monitor usage, Tre provides a software panel installed locally on your PC, which (theoretically) shows how much you are using in real-time. However, by Tre’s own admission, this local metering is not reliable and advises customers to check their usage directly via their account on Tre’s website. Yet, though Tre claims that the meter on the website is accurate, it isn’t, as both Angela and I discovered recently whilst checking her account.
The story on Tre’s website is the by now familiar story: it often does not work. Well, to be accurate, only the client log-in area often doesn’t work. The rest of the site, which is concerned with selling you something, works fine. If you try to log-in to your account it can take up to 3 attempts to get in and even then the client area is often either down or “in allestimento” – something which frequently (and suspiciously) happens at the end the month when everyone needs to check their usage. Once you do get in though, checking your detailed usage is a nightmare, and about the only thing that is straightforward to check is the actual over-all usage.
However, as we discovered, the online meter showing the total monthly usage is in fact inaccurate, contrary to Tre’s claim. This is a serious, because it means there is no reliable, independent way for the customer to check usage. The only way to do so, apparently, is to call Tre’s Customer service phone line.
But incredibly, even this measure does not guarantee an accurate usage report. We discovered as much when, after noting that the online meter had not changed in several days, we called Tre’s customer service and spoke to an operator. We were very surprised indeed when the operator gave us the same reading as the one we could see on the website. Yet Angela knew that she had used several hundred megabytes since that reading was first seen by her a few days earlier. Being close to the end of the month this was indeed worrying, since she only had a few hundred megabytes left as part of the traffic included in the 19 Euro quota.
When this was pointed out to the customer care operator the response was somewhat incredible, though not quite unexpected. Tre can “only give us the information it just gave us” (which we knew already); and yes, Tre can confirm that there is a problem with the online meter. The really exasperating part , however, was that no attempt was made to acknowledge that the customer should not be held responsible for any usage over the limit when Tre is unable to provide neither a reliable online usage check, nor a live customer-care check. The only recourse we were offered was a fax number (800 179 600) with vague instructions to send a letter detailing our complaint. Which, you guessed it, means even more time wasting.
The up shot of all this is that not only does Angela possibly face a huge bill yet again, but that she has to waste time – probably hours, if not days – if she wants to get Tre to acknowledge their responsibility in the matter – if at all. The situation is all the more incredible when one thinks that while offering cutting edge mobile communications, Tre can’t do something as as simple as keeping accurate track of customer usage.
Which makes one wonder whether an ethos of shoddy service provision is deliberately encouraged by large companies like Tre so as to get customers to use more of their services. Moreover, the lack of adequate and competent customer services belies another suspected ethos: that of deliberately frustrating customers when they try to redress an issue. Therefore, Angela’s choice is either to waste time and get frustrated pursuing the issue; or to cut her losses and resign herself to paying for more than she uses, simply so as to get on with her life.
This story is by now a very common and familiar one in Italy. Service providers provide services that end up causing the customer extra expense and/or wasted time, not to mention headache. It really is time that the consumer was treated better than this. Unfortunately, that may not happen for a long time, since at the end of the day Italian companies have the customer by the short and curlies to the point that even if the customer complains or changes provider he will still face the same treatment wherever he goes.
Perhaps, though, the only true solution is a change in the ethical practices of large companies. Dare we ask if there are any, nay, even just one, conscientious, honest and ethically driven CEO out there who’d like to be the first to set an example? We’ll all love you for it, and we’ll stampede our way to your shops in droves to sign up for service.
We would be interested to hear of anyone’s experiences with Tre, other MCO’s and any service provider in Italy. Please either email to info@vietri.it or leave a comment.
Information
Fans of Joseph Conrad will immediately recognise this famous quote from his novella and masterpiece Heart of Darkness. They will also realise that here it has been quoted in modern Internet English, substituting a new word that has entered the English language directly from Italian usage.
Originally intended to mean “Internet Service Provider and Domain Name Register” (www.aruba.it) Aruba has now come to symbolise dread, darkness and terror as well as a wicked habit of time wasting. (The Global Dictionary of Internet Abominations lists the definition of Aruba as, simply: horror)
As thousands of dissatisfied customers of Aruba Domain & Web Hosting Company will attest, the very mention of the word “Aruba” signifies horror to even the “profoundest heart of darkness”.
Many of them, including myself and my colleagues, have experienced excruciating weeks, months and in some cases years in vain attempts at registering and transferring domain names. In our case, our unhappy experience was with the domain name vietri.it, which took more than a year to transfer to Aruba from our previous (more expensive) provider.
We will spare the reader the fine details of the months of agonising correspondence, faxing, phone calling, photocopying, hair pulling, swearing and the involvement of a small army of secretaries in the attempt to successfully transfer the domain name, and simply recount the final gripping moments of the last conversation we had with Aruba before victory was finally ours…
“Hello, is that Angela?” I said, after waiting 17 minutes for the call to be answered.
“Yes, I am me. Is you is Mr Blake, Mr Blake?” answered Angela in very good English.
I was disappointed. After more than a year she still insisted on calling me Mr Blake. Very professional nonetheless I admit.
“We’ve faxed the final photocopies of my new passport; a copy of my British National Insurance certificate; and a signed photograph of Her Majesty, twice this morning and three times this afternoon ” I informed her.
We had taken these extra precautions of additional faxes, because a fax from Salerno in the south to Pisa in the north often doesn’t arrive. But I have since worked out the reason why. It is because the fax has to travel up hill, and therefore we now always take the precaution of faxing more than once and at least 4 or 5 times. (We’ve also noticed that there is a difference whether it is summer or winter).
Incidentally, the reason for this last fax to Aruba was because during the final month of the transfer “procedure” my passport had expired, necessitating a new flurry of photocopying and faxing (presumably so as to make sure that I myself hadn’t expired).
“Oh yes, Mr Blake-ez. We have receive it yesterday!”
I hesitated, wondering whether one should query how she could have received it yesterday, but decided instead to let it go… just in case.
“Well, that’s splendid” I said, choking back tears. “Is it…I mean has…”. I hesitated. “Does that mean www.vietri.it has been successfully transferred?” I spluttered.
Yes! It is beautiful day no?!”
I and my colleagues wept (I, because I was so happy. They, because they were now out of a job). After 14 months and 12 days, hundreds of faxes, phone calls and several brief holidays in which to recover and gather our strength, we had finally succeeded in doing something that would have taken less than a day in the UK. I couldn’t believe it and worried that something had been over looked, and that something awful and terrible would happen.
Just to make sure I (very politely) offered to send a photocopy of my paternal uncles’ elbow if it would help make sure of the transfer, but the assistant declined (also politely), though not after a slight pause, during which i almost believed that she might accept.
“Oh no Mr Blake-ez. We are very quiet (sic) fine. No photocopies more. The good has been done and my happy for you!”
I closed the phone feeling a little silly that I had even, at one point during the process, considered becoming religious if it might have helped. As I hugged my colleagues, I silently castigated myself for being so weak and of little faith. But nonetheless, as a final task I asked my small tribe of secretaries (now sadly unemployed) to make a note that next time we would take the train directly to Pisa and do it in person.
Though most of the other fruiti vendoli sell quality produce and are themselves all decent folk – including their wives, sons, daughters, nonni, cugini and various other family members stretching back to the Cretaceous period of Earth’s history, all of whom help out and generally provide the chit-chat when the main, boss fruiti vendolo is momentarily occupied and unable to banter – Beelzebub has the added distinction of being thoroughly uninterested in your life, and only bothers to check, vaguely, whether or not he knows you. If he remembers that he knows you, then you are dealt with swiftly and above all silently, since his memory of you seems to trigger an infinite database containing information on precisely which and in what quantities you require in the way of fruit and vegetables.
Moreover, he rarely weighs anything with the precision required to keep a trader out of prison, but nevertheless his prices are the best and unfailingly rounded off to reflect not profit but expediency. It is in fact clear that he wishes to be rid of you as quickly as you do of him.
God bless you Beelzebub, and may you grunt and snort and remain unshaven and quite grotesquely present for ever and ever, and for always.
It is glorious summer again, a fact confirmed by the presence of a corn on the cob vendor at every corner. Whether roasted or boiled, and with a little salt, a corn on the cob is a delicious snack, just the sort of thing to keep your strength up while sitting in traffic along the Litoranea.
However, not all corn on the cobs are created equal, a fact which any savvy street seller of this food will know. Some are long and thin, usually being quite tender and succulent; while others are short and fat and are accordingly harder and drier. It is therefore more difficult to sell the short fat ones, since most people will ask for a long thin one (as will be noted if you observe next time you go and buy one).
But this is no problem for a clever and wise seller. By a subtle understanding of human psychology he has worked out that he can usually get away with selling the short fat ones to men and the long thin ones to women. This may not sound like a stroke of genius, and indeed it is not. (Though there is something quite logical about the association nonetheless). What is a stroke of genius is to actually discover this little trick of the corn seller and then work out a strategy to counter it.
In essence the strategy is very simple. If you are a male, send your wife or girlfriend to buy the corn on the cob; but if you are female, make sure your husband or boyfriend stays well out of sight! But never, absolutely never, go and buy corn on the cob as a couple. You will end up with one fat one and one thin one, which is probably all that is needed to send you clear over the edge after a whole day spent in traffic along the coast of Italy. And though there have not yet been any reports about couples killing each other over who gets the long thin one, we can be sure that it is only a matter of time before such a tragedy comes to pass.