So I'm moving home from Auckland to Nelson (actually, I've already moved, but this little saga started two weeks ago I'm a bit liberal with the tense). Being a reasonably happy Orcon customer I wish to have my homeline+broadband moved over to the new place. It's here that my happiness takes a slight dent.

My new residence already has a phoneline with a number (but no broadband), in the name of the landlord with another telco. The obvious course of action seems to be for me to take over that line and have it ported to Orcon. Possibly not an everyday occurrence, but probably not unprecedented either. Orcon Provisioning thinks it's possible, and I give them all the landlord's account details (name, account number, company).

The switchover can take up to  two weeks, so I go back to freaking out about all the other stuff involved in transplanting your life halfway down the country. Meanwhile I get an order confirmation in my email, so I assume things are moving along.

Two weeks later, amongst the stacks of recently arrived boxes at my new abode, I get a bit annoyed at the persistent lack of a burning DSL light on my modem (well, Orcon's modem actually). So I phone and ask what's up. Turns out Provisioning haven't been able to locate the landlord's account.

Now, I can understand that telcos can be mightily pedantic about matching account details, and as I gave the details over the phone the slightest otherwise inconsequential transcription error could derail the whole thing.

But why (WHYYYYYYYY!) oh why did it take me calling up after 2 weeks to find this out? Couldn't someone at Provisioning have been a bit more pro-active and contacted me as soon as there was a problem? You're my ISP, I think you know my email address!

*sigh* So now I've emailed them the details instead, in the hope that it is right this time. And then I probably have to wait another week or two before I finally have my own internet connection back. Argh it's all so frustrating.

On the plus side, Nelson is quite nice.