How Things Work

Alright, off the bat, let me say I love Ireland. It's cute, quaint, fun, compact, and cheerful. It's also exhausting and flabbergasting at times.

This will be a little ditty to give you an idea about how things work in Ireland.

Eircom is the main provider of broadband service in Ireland. Our landlords had service and were nice enough to leave it on while we got settled, with the idea that we would transfer the service into our names once we had a bank account set up.

(For the rest of the post, it will be helpful to know that our landlords only left this apartment because they moved to the states.)

So when we were ready, we called Eircom and said that we live here now and wouldn't they be so kind as to transfer the service into our names. They said that we can't do it, but the current subscribers could. So William (one of our two our awesomes landlords) calls Eircom from the states. Turns out that he can disconnect the service, but not transfer it unless he and we are in the same room and can hand the phone back and forth. Also, that setting up a conference call isn't good enough- we have to be physically in the same room.

So he and we decide it's best just to cancel and we'll start a new subscription. So on Monday, he cancels and Michelle then calls Eircom. They tell her that the service doesn't actually get disconnected for 24 hours, so please call back.

On Tuesday, she calls again and they say that while the service is indeed shut off, their system don't update for 48 hours, so please call back.

On Wednesday she calls again and gets the phone set up, but the broadband for some reason can't be set up, but that she will do it in the next two days and Michelle doesn't need to call back. (Short interlude here... as crazy messed up Ireland is policy-wise, the Irish do actually give a damn and it's such a small country anyway, so when the Eircom lady tells Michelle that she'll set up the broadband on Friday you can almost trust her. And indeed, this actually does happen like clockwork.)

So the deal is, Eircom sets up the broadband and then sends you out a wireless router that will work with your subscription. They put it in the Post on Friday.

I mean, you can't really expect it to arrive until Tuesday, right? But when it doesn't arrive by Thursday evening, Michelle calls Eircom, who are surprised that we haven't received it, and that it said it was supposed to be delivered on Tuesday.

PHEW. Glad that got straightened out.

Now on to the Post Office. So here's the deal: they did actually try to deliver it on Tuesday, but apparently Michelle wasn't home, or they didn't read the note saying our buzzer was out and please call X number, or whatever. In the US, they'd stick one of those little yellow "you weren't home" post-its, and deliver the next day.

In Ireland, they haven't invented this system yet. So what they do is they take the box back to the Post Office. Then they write you a letter telling you that you weren't home. Then they put the letter in the mail, stamp and all. A few days later, the letter arrives in the post, telling you that you missed the package and you should pick it up.

Crazy, eh? And don't even get Michelle started on where Bus 13's route starts. Save that one for another time.