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I'm not exactly sure where this should go, so if this section isn't appropriate...no fish slapping!
I may have already mentioned my Italian phone/internet company crisis before, but I believe it was a response to someone's thread, so I'll try to go over it again here, and give you all the fabulous update on that situation.
Starting back when we moved in to our house here in Monteforte: we bought a phone line and internet with Telecom Italia. They told us that, to pay our bill, we needed an e-mail account with the company (which they assign to us) and a codice fisciale (like a social security number). Our bills will be mailed to us, but we can also check our e-mail for the bill number and pay it online. We must also check our e-mail for our ACCOUNT NUMBER. (It's all in caps - itmust be important!)
Okay, fab. Our internet works, our phone works.
However...our landlady, when she built the house, didn't exactly register it with the post office; when we moved in, she finally did, but because it's so far off the road, the postal workers can rarely find it. So, we're not getting our phone bill that way until it's a month late.
Telecom Italia neglected to tell us the e-mail account information. At that point, in early May, they told us we had to have our ACCOUNT NUMBER for them to give us our e-mail information...but to get our ACCOUNT NUMBER, we need our e-mail information. Do you see the paradox?
So, we're not able to pay our bill, as we haven't actually seen what the bill is, and no one at the phone company will tell us.
So they shut off our internet. We finally work it out so a friend who knows someone who knows someone gets the billing infomation and e-mail account, and we pay the bill. This is late May.
And we wait. And we call, and we talk to someone new every time. Someone in Milan answers one day, someone in Naples the next. They have no inter-office computer system, so no one remembers why we're calling, and they all have different excuses for why our internet is still off.
So July rolls around, still no internet and landline. August rolls around. Still no internet. FINALLY, someone tells us that when we pay our bill, we have to print the receipt they give us, and fax it back to them for their records. This makes no sense to me, but okay. We do it, and the next day, our iternet comes back on.
A week later, it's out again. They say we haven't paid the bill. We're paid up two months in advance by this point, and we fax them all the receipts and charges to our bank account. The internet comes back on two days later.
Last Friday, we came to find out that, according to them, since we haven't paid our bill in FIVE MONTHS (WTF!), our debt has been handed over to a collection agency. You guys remember when I said we were paid two months in advance?
...It's easily solved with another fax and a phone call from a friend fluent in Italian Shouting Match (which is, apparently, the only way to get things solved? They yell a LOT here), but JEEBUS.
For everyone's interest...this is actually good service from Telecom, compared to back in the 90's, when it could take between four months to a year for your phone line to be hooked up in the first place.
More as the story unfolds, I suppose.
I may have already mentioned my Italian phone/internet company crisis before, but I believe it was a response to someone's thread, so I'll try to go over it again here, and give you all the fabulous update on that situation.
Starting back when we moved in to our house here in Monteforte: we bought a phone line and internet with Telecom Italia. They told us that, to pay our bill, we needed an e-mail account with the company (which they assign to us) and a codice fisciale (like a social security number). Our bills will be mailed to us, but we can also check our e-mail for the bill number and pay it online. We must also check our e-mail for our ACCOUNT NUMBER. (It's all in caps - itmust be important!)
Okay, fab. Our internet works, our phone works.
However...our landlady, when she built the house, didn't exactly register it with the post office; when we moved in, she finally did, but because it's so far off the road, the postal workers can rarely find it. So, we're not getting our phone bill that way until it's a month late.
Telecom Italia neglected to tell us the e-mail account information. At that point, in early May, they told us we had to have our ACCOUNT NUMBER for them to give us our e-mail information...but to get our ACCOUNT NUMBER, we need our e-mail information. Do you see the paradox?
So, we're not able to pay our bill, as we haven't actually seen what the bill is, and no one at the phone company will tell us.
So they shut off our internet. We finally work it out so a friend who knows someone who knows someone gets the billing infomation and e-mail account, and we pay the bill. This is late May.
And we wait. And we call, and we talk to someone new every time. Someone in Milan answers one day, someone in Naples the next. They have no inter-office computer system, so no one remembers why we're calling, and they all have different excuses for why our internet is still off.
So July rolls around, still no internet and landline. August rolls around. Still no internet. FINALLY, someone tells us that when we pay our bill, we have to print the receipt they give us, and fax it back to them for their records. This makes no sense to me, but okay. We do it, and the next day, our iternet comes back on.
A week later, it's out again. They say we haven't paid the bill. We're paid up two months in advance by this point, and we fax them all the receipts and charges to our bank account. The internet comes back on two days later.
Last Friday, we came to find out that, according to them, since we haven't paid our bill in FIVE MONTHS (WTF!), our debt has been handed over to a collection agency. You guys remember when I said we were paid two months in advance?
...It's easily solved with another fax and a phone call from a friend fluent in Italian Shouting Match (which is, apparently, the only way to get things solved? They yell a LOT here), but JEEBUS.
For everyone's interest...this is actually good service from Telecom, compared to back in the 90's, when it could take between four months to a year for your phone line to be hooked up in the first place.
More as the story unfolds, I suppose.