Our first target is the phone company — Deutsche Telekom. For clarity, Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile are more or less the same company, incomprehensibly twisted into each other. Also, they have a complete monopoly in our area. 
Essentially, this corporation is more evil than the demonic offspring of AIG, Charles Manson, Wal-Mart, and Toquemada. (Yes, I know that’s four entities — you have a lot to learn about demonic reproduction.)
A rundown of our road to high-speed internet:
September:
-DT tells us we can get a sweet deal on phone and DSL.
-Two weeks later, the same woman tells us that there are no “available ports” in our neighborhood, but hopefully soon. Another DT employee says we have two options: steal someone else’s wireless, or move.
-We flashback 12 years to the days of dial-up and try to be patient
November:
-Our patience waning, we inform our landlords that we may start to look for a new place if we can’t get DSL.
-Panicked, Mrs. Pog Person offers to go with us to talk to DT again, as she is convinced that the last guy who rented from them had it. (That’s what confuses her, not the overall preposterousness of her and her daughter both having DSL in the house while we’re denied.)
December:
-At the DT store, an employee explains to us and Mrs. P that there are plans to lay more cable, and that we should have DSL by mid-February. She asks if we’d like to be put on the priority list so we’d be among the first to get new ports. We nod enthusiastically, and figure we can wait a couple more months…we really like our apartment.
-In the meantime, Amber enacts Operation Pognet. She desperately tries to convince the Pog People that all they have to do is hook up our wireless router to their connection, and we can have internet. We emphasize that this will have no impact on their surfing (they use the web maybe once a week on a computer from around 1991) and offer to pay the entire cost of their service.
-In a fit of techno-phobia, they freak out and decide this is a bad idea because their son in Frankfurt set up their computer and they don’t want us to break it. That night we explore the potential of creating a a clean engine that runs on the steam coming out of our ears.
Mid-February:
-We swing by the T-Mobile store in the mall to check on the progress. A man there tells us that there are no updates, no current plans to lay new cable, and that the conversation we had with his colleague in December can’t have happened. He knows this because there is no “priority list,” there never was, and we are stupid, stupid Americans for thinking that any DT employee would ever make such a promise. (Okay, he didn’t call us stupid. Well, not in English.)
-The man, fearing Amber’s gangsta stare offers to have someone from the “home office’ in Bonn give us a call.
March:
-Amber discovers while perusing the DT website (in German) that they seem to offer a deal on their mobile connect USB stick– “web’n’walk”. We wonder why nobody ever brought this up as an option. She investigates further, and we prepare to inquire over the phone.
-Amber calls and asks, in German, if there is an agent who speaks English. The response: “No English. Maybe later. Try later.” And they hung up on her!!
-She finds an automated menu on their help-line that offers to connect you to an English-speaking agent. After listening to Muzak for awhile, a recording comes on and tells her that there are no English-speakers available right now, please try later, and hangs up on her.
-Getting more and more frustrated, that call from the home office catches us off guard , as it is a full month after our visit to the store. The man knows nothing of the “web’n’walk”, but promises that someone will call us the next day after Amber threatens to steal his kitten .
-The woman who does call speaks passable English, but cannot handle numbers. Luckily, I’m a pro at German numbers! She explains the miracles of “web’n’walk” and I berate her with repeated questions to confirm she’s not doing a sudoku while talking to me. She explains that the stick will be delivered, but that Amber — the account holder — needs to sign for it. I am promised that once we have the stick, we’ll be online in minutes. “You will be very, very happy.”
-The delivery man comes on a Saturday when neither of us are home. When Amber calls to reschedule, they inform her that they can’t deliver after 4 pm, so we’ll just have to wait another week, until Saturday.
-The USB stick arrives. It is beautiful. Amber has to sign a half-dozen forms to confirm that she has received the thing. It says right on the package: “3 easy steps — you’ll be online in minutes!” But our computer says, “No signal detected.” Grrr…
-At the DT store, after many phone calls and much confusion, they determine that the paperwork needs to make it back to the home office, and then our stick will be remotely activated. This could take up to five days. We hear: “mid-February.”
-Finally — FINALLY — on March 25th, we get online.
Okay, so we’re whining. Sure, high-speed internet is a privilege, not a right (though that’s debatable!).
But the frustration of being lied to, being told different things by different people, and being ignored really got to us.
Up Next: The Haircuts of German Teenage Boys
Amber
Joe
Genausländers: Ich bin neu hier. 