Nathan to the rescue

I need to add an appendix to my last post, as I am now at home and ON LINE. You’d have thought frustration levels couldn’t have risen from Monday, but there were a number of developments in our Virgin Media saga. 

1. On returning from the internet café I saw some neighbours who also use Virgin Media and learned that they were having no problems. Conclusion it was not an area problem. We passed the information on to VM.

2. I began to receive text messages:

“Virgin Media Outage Update – ID F…..532. We’re pleased to tell you this issue is now fixed. Best wishes, the Virgin Media Team.” Great news – except it still wasn’t. So I wrote a message saying, “No, it’s not. Please come and sort it out.” Only it refused to be sent. Presumably Virgin have a one-way only text number. 

3. On Monday evening and again early on Tuesday, we had phone messages from Bangladesh saying a technician would come and sort things out for us. Yippee! But 30 minutes and 60 minutes later we received more phone messages telling us the issue was now fixed. It wasn’t. And so I rang VM and told them. As Jane was out I couldn’t go through their standardised rigmarole of checking the router lights etc which Jane had done twice before. 

Somehow the chap in Bangladesh understood me sufficiently and in the end said that indeed a technician would come and help that morning. Well, Nathan (for he was the longed-for technician) arrived. He ran checks and changed the router. Still it was not working…. So he went to the local junction box and found that our line hadn’t been labelled and had a “noise blocker” on it. When and why it was put there is a mystery, but now at last we’re on line again. Phew! Nathan said we might receive a customer satisfaction survey. That was to do with his performance – not Virgin Media’s. If it were the latter, it would be way into negative scores. Nathan’s would be highly positive. Thanks, Nathan.

Automated falsehoods?

On Friday our internet went down. We’re with Virgin Media, which has served us well thus far. After a time we rang the help number and heard a message apologising for the break in service to our road’s post code, and as it was more complex than usual it would take longer but their engineers were hard at work on it.

The next day it still wasn’t working and so we rang again. The same message. We gave a mobile number for text updates. This morning three days after the original fault and after no texts we decided we wanted to hear something more than an automated message, and so we navigated through to a voice (possibly in India). The nice lady told us there was a local outage and it should be sorted by Friday… A good thing I’m not employed from home. Then Jane pointed out there’d been no engineers in the area. The troubleshooter then ran some diagnostic tests on our system. “Make sure all the plugs are in the sockets. What are the lights doing? Push the switch on the bottom. Etc etc.” Naturally we wondered about the “area outage.” Don’t worry, we were told, we would now be “escalated.” Jane hoped there'd be some rebate on our bill. I think she was told that there was a standard OffCom compensation of £8 per 24 hours - maybe Virgin Media will be paying us next month....

So I have come to our local internet café to catch up with emails – and to vent my frustration with what are apparently automated obfuscations – or possible lies. Perhaps when I get back, our home internet will be restored – some hope!

In praise of physiotherapists

Dedicated to Emily

I'm fortunate to have had excellent physiotherapists, starting of course with my lovely wife (MCSP [distinction]). Then in addition for many years the specialist neuro physio, Lesley, who last year passed me on to Emily. When you've been used to someone, there's always uncertainty when you have to transfer to a new professional; but I needn't have worried. Emily is brilliant. How lucky am I!

To give you a small example: I have been finding walking round the house with my rollator (zimmer frame on wheels) increasingly difficult and slow. My legs have been tending to cross over and my feet land on each other. Every now and then I had to call Jane to untangle me. Emily suggested a free metronome app on my phone might help. She set it at 42/60 - not fast but my sort of average rate. It has transformed my walking. The reason is, I think, that walking is now no longer a reflex action but I have consciously to move each leg. ie I have to concentrate on each step. Before the metronome, my brain, willy-nilly, would wander down its own wayward neural pathways. Now the metronome calls my brain to attention every beat and doesn’t let it  wander.

I now have a heavy cold and am feeling unduly sorry for myself, but still the metronome dragooned me from the lift to the breakfast table. As Jane commented when I had sat down without much fuss, “You’d never have been able to do that before the metronome.”

Of course that’s not the only thing Emily sorted out. I have a whole sheet of exercises to stop me going utterly flabby, including boxing (!), stretching and pedalling. I’m having time off, pleading sick leave, at the moment, but the prospect of a phone-call when she’ll check up on me should be sufficient to keep me at it! I’m so grateful for the NHS through whom I receive such skilled treatment – as well as from my dentist, doctor, OTs and hospital clinic. May they never be privatised!