Alice and Tim - Don't Go With Those Two!

One of the great things about having a blog is that you can mouth off in public about things that annoy you. I try not to do this too often, mostly because it's boring to read, but this might actually be useful to somebody, so here goes.

When I first came to Italy, I decided to get mobile internet through a company called Wind. Other people I know have had no problems with their technology, but for some reason, it didn't work on my computer and, after spending a fortune in internet credit without getting an internet connection in return, I decided to try another company.

I bought a modem and sim card from Alice, which is the internet branch of the company Tim, which in turn is owned by Telecom Italia. I got them from a shop owned by a friend of a friend and she was very helpful, gave me good advice and let me try the equipment in advance. I signed up for a promotion that gave me 9GB fror 25 euros a month.

For the first month, it worked really well. Then, as the month drew to an end, I bought new credit for the sim card ready for the next month.

The day after the second month was supposed to start, I tried to connect to the internet. It worked for about 20 minutes, then stopped. I phoned up to check the credit and discovered that I had none.

When I came back from my Christmas trip home, I bought some more credit, topped up the sim and connected to the internet. 2 minutes later, my 5 euros of credit was gone.

I waited two days for the customer helpline to be open and phoned them up. I explained very politely that 35 euros of credit seemed to have disappeared without a trace. The woman explained that when you top up the credit, you also have to request the "promotion" (eg the 9GB of downloads per month) every time. This was not written in any documents that I received from the shop but I politely admitted that it was my fault and asked her to explain where the credit had gone, if it hadn't been spent on renewing my "promotion". Her response was that I had been on the internet since the promotion ran out.

"Yes," I agreed, "but I had 5 euros of credit and I was only connected for 2 minutes. I don't understand how 2 minutes of internet time can cost 5 euros."

At this point the woman got seriously ratty. She told me it wasn't her job to convince me of anything, nor to listen to what I had to say. Somewhere in a few seconds of us speaking over each other in very loud, very fast and in my case probably very poor Italian, she told me that being connected to the internet without a "promotion" costs 7 euros for every megabyte. Then she put the phone down on me.

Luckily, the understanding and technologically savvy Mr A was on hand to give me a hug after this traumatising experience and to confirm that at that rate on a high speed connection, 2 minutes of being connected to the internet could indeed cost 5 euros. And that, my friends, corresponds to a rate of a hundred and fifty euros per hour.

If I wasn't in Italy, I would write to the company and complain about the rude woman.

If I wasn't in Italy, I would contact trading standards.

Being in Italy, I sucked it up, renewed the promotion for January and moaned about it on my blog instead.