The Jens Teislev Place

Are you Spanish thinking you have problems with Telefonica? Well at least you speak Spanish. You should try to be a guiri. They will hang up on you 50% of the times you call, 25% of the times they will accidentally disconnect you or transfer you to a person that speaks neither Spanish nor English. I mean – I suspect they have a button that says “Annoying Foreigner” and which brings you to a person that ONLY speaks Dutch or Arabic!!

The remaining 25% where you are actually able to get through to Telefonica you will be met by a person that is the personification of supreme power. A person that commands respect that not even Franco or the King himself. What they say will be LAW and any suggestion you might have will be met with a negation.

On the other hand you have to just bend over and take it up the a..; cause there is NO REAL competition. If you should have the nerve to go for a competitor like YA.com, Orange or Tele2 – they will either make sure that the connection is not going to work or they will simply make an anonymous

call to your new operator and tell them that you have decided to switch to Telefonica. That will effectively cancel your service for a minimum of 14 days – unless of course you should decide to go with Telefonica.

Finally the price you are given by Telefonica when they sell or advertise is not the same as what you end up paying. The first months you will surely get bills that just plainly do not make sense (either VERY high or in negative). This is to make you confused. Then after 6 months your bill will flatten out on “what they feel like charging”. I pay 90 euros per month for TRIO. I have a client that pays 40 euros per month for DUO, one that pays 60 euros for DUO and one that pays 80 euros for DUO.

Telefonica is an embarrassment to Spain! Si, España es diferente!

Having now lived in Spain for 5 years I am starting to get Spanified. Inintially there was the usual “what does Spain have to offer except bad food, terrible weather and guys that steal our women”; but now I am proud to say that I like all the other Spaniards have turned. Soy Andaluz )

So what better than to pest my visitors with some true Andalucian music performed by El Arrebato from Sevilla.

After having now lived in our house for close to 4 months we have finally been blessed with a stable internet connection in our home. Initially we did try to go for Tele2, but they turned out to be incompetent and as they were unable to deliver the DSL line we decided to switch to Telefonica. In this connection I dare not say anything about bullying or unfair competition as that might cause our carrier to mess it all up )

On one of my nerdish trips around the internet I stumbled on a very funny site with several funny little videos about the life in Spain. Something that gives a very accurate picture of life here ) Hope they at least will make you happy that you stay in the cold north!

They come from the website SolChannel and are presented by Candice Curtis. One of the most entertaining are the one below about customer service here in the sun..

Spain on Video

We did hope that we would have been able to celebrate New Year in the new house, but unfortunately it still has some work to be done – i.e. it would be nice with a kitchen! Anyway we had planned to go to Alcoy and celebrate the New Years night, but unfortunately no hotels were available there. However we had a good time on our own with “Dinner for One” (90-års fødselsdagen) on German television NDR and enjoying a nicely served dish of Alien (read lobster). A few pictures have been posted in the photo album as the last post in Winter 2007.