Buonasera Tutti,
Firstly, let me apologise for me not sending this note in Italian, my Italian is not very good and this post may get technical so I thought best to write it in English and not attempt to use Google to translate it all. Now let me apologise for the length of the post!
So, we decided to move to Italy last year as my girlfriend wanted to move back home and we bought a house that was an unfinished new build that we completed ourselves. The main part is is that there is no phone line into the building… The property is four apartments and they all have the infrastructure for phone connections but nothing connecting the building to the street.
When we looked last year to order the phone line and internet via TIM the house shows up on their search, offers us FTTC and the order went through fine but they then cancelled it 3 weeks later stating we needed to call them to do complete the order, which we did and they booked us in with a technician. The first technician arrived and stated that we needed to speak to another department regarding the connection for the building to the street. TIM then contacted us and advised they had arranged for the second technician to come and complete the installation. He left stating the same thing as the first technician, that it was another department (new building connections). Finally they sent another technician who again could not connect the line but was helpful and tried to arrange for a team to come and inspect the building to see if they can install the line from the street.
We then rang the phone number he gave us (the same one on the website for the new buildings connections) but it is only an answerphone that states to email or fax(!) TIM and someone will be in touch. 3 months later, after many attempts to phone and email them, needless to say we couldn’t fax them, they finally sent us a letter stating that they would send someone over to have a look and see if they can connect us for the cost of €200! Needless to say this isn’t promising nor is it anywhere close to what you would call customer service. We don’t really want to pay €200 for someone to come round in a few weeks and probably tell us they won’t do it, also, the fact we contacted them a year ago and this is all we have got from them really annoys me! (That’s me being polite about it!!)
Anyway, we are yet to pay them, the company that sold us the house doesn’t want to pay them and the other flats are either holiday homes or not sold yet so if we do want to get a connection for the entire building we will likely be paying for the everyone.
I did think about looking at purchasing via FastWeb and see if they can get TIM to connect the line but I feel that it will be the same issue. The really frustrating thing is that it is impossible to contact or even find out information regarding getting a telephone line into a house.
Also, please note that all of the houses and apartments around our building have connections and phone lines so it is not as if we are in a very remote area.
I’ve looked at a few wireless options but due to my work the download and upload limits would need to be high (almost 500GB a month) and I also see very mixed reviews about the options available (Eolo, Ogilink, smartweb24 etc) so am cautious of getting one of those and wasting time and money.
If anyone can offer any advise, recommendations, phone numbers, TIM’s CEO’s direct line I would really appreciate it as this has been turning my hair grey for months now!
Grazie in advance for any assistance.