Groundhog Decade

Living in the boonies has one major drawback: only one company, PCCW, provides broadband Internet service, and its effective monopoly means it can screw customers with impunity.

Seeing a lot of ads from Hong Kong Broadband Network, a company promising speeds up to 100Mbps (a heck of a lot faster than my current 8mbps service, which rarely gets above 3mbps when I conduct speed tests), I visited its web site. But it was entirely in Chinese, and had no English option.

Not a good sign.

Then I noticed the name of the parent company, CTI, which I'd previously used when living in the city and with whom I had major headaches, especially when calling for technical support; any time I did I had to jump through hoops to find someone who could even barely speak English (I speak some Cantonese but computer-lingo is over my head).

Again, not a good sign.

But giving them the benefit of the doubt, I called the registration service (after drilling through the site's Chinese menus to find it) to enquire whether HKBN had installed lines out this far, and if so, whether they extended to our village.

The first guy I spoke with had little English, so he transferred me. Uh oh.

I began having horrific flashbacks.

The second guy I spoke with was just as bad, so he transferred me.

Cripes, I thought, the company offers amazing technology but it hasn't improved its customer service one iota in the last 10 years?

A few seconds later I heard background noise and what sounded like someone fumbling with the phone. Then a young lady answered. She was as familiar with English as I am with, oh, Portuguese. With difficulty I got her to understand my question, and her reply was a two-word answer: "Someone else." Disgusted, I hung up.

And then I realised that even if HKBN serviced our area and I signed up, I'd be right back where I was in 1999: trying to get answers to a simple question and having to jump through hoops.

Oh, wait ...

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