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Background note: Although Telefonica technically doesn't have a monopoly on the telephone service, the competitive company (one), has such limited service that it is almost as if they do own the market.
My Spanish education will never be over. I realized this yesterday as my boss called Telefonica's Customer Service number. Although it was actually the second Customer Service number. The story goes something like this:
Wednesday afternoon he discovered that sometime during 5 and 6 pm the telephone line and internet service went down. So, he called Telefonica number one. After some minutes of arguing with the woman on the phone that the cause was not in the school, she agreed to send a repair man, although warning him that if the repair man found the problem in the school it would cost 50 euros per hour. Agreed.
In Spanish time, the repair man arrived early. Thursday, mid morning. And he discovered that the problem was in the Central Switchboard. So he returned to Telefonica and reconnected the telephone line. The end.
However, we then noticed that the internet wasn't working. Actually, after a lot of head scratching and unplugging and plugging in again, the router was declared broken. The router, which was working fine before the mess up with the telephone line. So again, on the phone with Telefonica.
Now, I'm not sure how they do this, but it appeared as though they have some kind of radar for potentially long conversations. So, the woman at the first Customer Service number gives my boss another number to call. He calls number two, where the famous sentence is repeated in an automated voice, "Thank you for calling Telefonica. This call will be 6 cents a minute. Please hold. A representative will be with you shortly." And then the music began.
My boss sighed audibly and said some rude things about Telefonica. He promised that he had timed this before, and he was always left on hold for at least one minute. I was thinking about when we had our telephone line installed in our new apartment and my husband told me, "You can let the Telefonica man inside the house, but DO NOT accept anything from him, and DO NOT let him install anything." Apparently, they have a trick of plugging in a Telefonica telephone whenever they install a line and then charging the ignorant client rent on the telephone every month! Jose's grandmother had been paying 6 euros a month for 25 years!
Suddenly, there was a woman on the phone. My boss explained the situation and his part of the conversation went a little like this:
"Ok, yesterday our line was cut and the problem was found to be from there. But now, our internet is down and the router is broken. ...... No, the router is broken, there aren't any lights on the outside of the box. ..... No, it isn't a Telefonica router. .... But, that's not the point. The point is that before you cut my telephone line, everything was working, and now it doesn't work. .... Oh, a Telefonica router? And how much will that be? .... 59.90? .... No, no, do not order me a router! If I decide I want a Telefonica router, I will order one myself! .... No, the purpose of this call was NOT to order a Telefonica router, it was to complain that Telefonica broke the router I had. .... No, I have not ordered a Telefonica router. .... Ok, I'm hanging up now. .... NO, I will not hold to answer any questions about the performance of the Customer Service Representative, you are charging me six cents a minute!"
How, in the world, do people stand for companies charging them to call and complain about their service?!