Three Mobile Broadband

I noticed last Friday that my outlook email appeared to be going into a spasm. It kept telling me that it couldn’t send or reply to anything as my settings had changed. I wouldn’t mind if I had spent the previous ten minutes attacking my settings with a blunt spanner, but since I hadn’t, then just exactly what was wrong?

I still can access the Internet, so I peered around Three’s website for some help. They do live web chat help for mobile problems, but anyone with broadband problems can bog off, apparently. Well, it doesn’t say that of course, but for broadband you have to fill in a form and hope that it doesn’t ping off into a vortex. I waited ten minutes for a response, which is very patient for me, if a tad unrealistic on my behalf, and then I called them.

I got through to a very helpful young man who may or may not have been sitting in a call centre across the world. He wanted to help me. He asked lots of questions, and then asked me to check my SMTP. He wanted me to type in exactly the same SMTP as I already have – this stumped him. He said he had to elevate my problem (I picture some cranky lift, filled with cranky folk). He said they would call me back.

They called me as I was in a silent art gallery on Saturday. Luckily my mobile is always on vibrate just in case these embarrassing moments crop up unannounced, and so I could answer and hiss that this was a bit inconvenient without annoying everyone else. I took it outside and then repeated everything that I had already said to bloke number one. Bloke number two said a lot of customers were reporting this strange phenomenon that I was going through. He said they would get back to me.

And since then nothing. Surely the answer is obvious, somewhere someone has spilt a cup of coffee on an important server, and the result is sending everyone’s emails into outer space. I am probably waiting on a cleaner, working for the equivalent of fifty pence, in a tiny country with no heating, to come along and wipe an oily rag across the server that holds my email connection.

I really need to be able to send emails. I need to apply for jobs! I need to pitch for jobs! Don’t Three know its hard enough getting a signal with their dongle of doom, let alone trying to conduct a life through its wavering blue light? I get the feeling I will have to call them again tomorrow, explain again my problem, and then be told again that they are working on it and will call me back. It was my fault for hissing on Saturday, I knew at the time that was a bad move, like complaining about food in restaurants, especially when you are still going to eat there. I’ll call it the dongle of delight if only my email works tomorrow!

Bloody computers

Bloody, bloody emails! How to configure your existing email into Outlook and change your outgoing host to your new SMTP – anyone? I call my new broadband provider – Virgin – and am put on hold. Finally, when I am put through to ‘Derek’, I am cut off. I call again, temper rising. This time I get through to a bored sounding ‘David’, who mutters that I need to put smtp.ntlworld.com – which I do, and then nothing works. Outlook behaves as if I have just poured poison into its innards. I do what all good technical help people do, and wiggle the wires, and then press restart. Outlook glares at me. I call Virgin, again.

‘Oh, you tried to connect to ntl when you are blueyonder,’ chuckled ‘Neil’ at the end of the phone. Now, how on earth am I supposed to know the damn difference? But Neil was a delightful chap, telling me I could host my website and email by another way entirely. I didn’t understand him but he probably knew that and it didn’t worry either of us.

All now appears to be working fine, except last night’s tussle with Messenger. Apparently an old one I wanted to delete was running in the background, so I tried to delete it, only to succeed in deleting Internet Explorer. I really should go back to the days of pen and paper.

Oh, and yesterday I spent far too long searching for local London magazines. Y’see – I write for one already, and the idea I have is such a good one that it could easily be extended to other local mags, that is, if I can find the buggers. Now I have always prided myself on my ability to leap, skim and dive into the Internet to extract what I need. Yet yesterday I was like a splashy kid scared to let go of its water wings. So far I have:

North London
Angel -- North -- N16 -- Northwest

West London
Grove -- The Hill -- Westside -- Matchbox -- The Resident

South London
Rise -- Southwest -- Living South

East London
?

Yet I do not have contact details for any except Grove, Matchbox and Angel, except the latter's email came back with a message undeliverable. The Resident’s phone number was out of order. And who knows what folk in the East read – perhaps they don’t.

Sigh – all I need is a few magazines to write for each month that ‘pay’ (golden word, that) and then at least I have a few pounds coming in, as opposed to me opening the window and emptying my purse into thin air every day.