Block Chop 70: This webpage is not available.

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Right, that’s it – I’m fucking fed up with BT internet.  Over a month ago we got a letter saying they were replacing the signal boxes or something in the local area and we could expect minor disruptions in service for a couple of weeks; slight variations in connection speed, occasional drop-out, that sort of thing.  Probably six weeks later and the problem continues to get worse and worse.  I’m having to reset the router five times a day, websites are loading slowly or not at all, pictures are scroll-downloading like the old days, a thirty minute video needs to buffer for over thirty minutes to stream properly: it’s a fucking nightmare, like living in the dark ages.  How did those poor mud-scrabbling peasants cope in their servile lives of impoverished serfdom and slow internet. 

A few months ago BT contacted us asking if we wanted a free upgrade on our service to BT infinity.  No extra cost, they just needed to send us a new router and send an engineer to install a new filter on the phone line.  They said much faster top speeds (up to 40 meg downloads, I think), no extra cost.  We never received the router, and no engineer turned up.  If it was some blagger phoning up to extract private information, they did a very poor job.  They asked for no private information, no financial information, nothing.  I have been the victim of no scams here, just of someone forgetting to click a button on BT’s customer service software.  I had completely forgotten about this until the service started getting so bad.

None of this was really bothering me, and all of a sudden I’ve just exploded with frustration.  I can’t read my fucking emails, I’m writing this not knowing if I will be able to post it (if it’s up, you know I have found a brief window of internet access), I’m fed up of the massive variety of page loading errors I keep seeing, especially the I-want-to-punch-you-in-the-face cheekiness of ‘Oops! Google Chrome could not find...’  Now it’s started to bother me it won’t stop.  Usually when there are line problems they are over in a matter of minutes, so I have never experienced a prolonged period of such hassle.  Tomorrow afternoon, as soon as I get in BT is going to get a piece of my mind.  And the random call-centre employee will feel a little deader inside, and a little more hate for their employer.  And I will feel worse for subjecting an innocent customer care assistant to a barrage of hate aimed at the faceless, incompetent behemoth that is BT.

I’ve just run a few online internet connection speed checks.  I’m supposed to be getting a download speed of 20 meg; I am getting a top speed of 3.6 meg.  Not fucking acceptable.  (I put the ‘fucking’ in because I am annoyed.  Don’t say it’s not called for; it’s exactly situations like this that it is called for.  So fuck off, imaginary Swearing Police...)  I want my 40 meg, and I want it now!  I’ve run a barrage of virus checks; adware, malware, spyware, worms, crabs, syphilis... all that.  And I’m pretty sure the laptop is clean.  It smells clean.  So the message is this:  BT, it’s your fault.  Up until recent weeks I had been a big fan.  Your service had been solid and reliable.  Now it is weak, shoddy and haphazard.  Fix it.