Invoice in the wilderness

NOT a Business Centre

“That’s curious: this month, Itisalot’s online billing system seems to have gone wrong.”

The Crumbling Villa typically generates about AED50 a month in international phone calls made on the land line. Other calls are made, but these are on pre-paid mobile accounts. Why is an unprecedented five-fold increase in IDD calls this month coupled with an inability of Itisalot to itemise the bill?

Is it the housemaid making long calls to Sri Lanka? Probably not. Is it Beloved Wife liaising at length with retailers in the USA who are incapable of understanding that 95% of their potential customer base doesn’t have a US ZIP code? More likely.

I phoned Itisalot’s Helpless Desk on 101 and explained that this month, and this month only, the International Direct Dialled phone calls were not itemised. After a long waste of oxygen, electricity, and everyone’s time, the guy on the Helpless Desk agreed to email the call breakdown to me. He then chose instead to email a form to fill in to apply for an itemised bill, which would have to be taken to an Itisalot Business Centre with copies of Passport, Visa, ID card, National Cycling Proficiency Certificate, and Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring. I’m disinclined to do this, primarily because the service has already been applied for and, up until last month, works.

I dropped into Itisalot’s outlet at Mirdif City Centre to sort out the problem. No, they couldn’t help; I’d have to go to a Business Centre. These, I was assured, are all over the UAE. They’re easily identifiable because they each have an oversized golf ball on the roof. I’d have to take an ID card, official NOC letter, passport and visa copy, attested inside-leg measurement, hoofprints…

This is not entirely true. The golf ball near Trade Centre Roundabout does not surmount a Business Centre, the only place to go is in Deira, and how unreasonable it is of me not to know this. 

So I went into the Deira Business Centre and, after queuing for half an hour, explained my difficulty. Clearly, because Itisalot can total up and invoice the value of last month’s International Call Charges Charges [sic] then Itisalot must have a record of the calls. But no: owing to a problem in upgrading the software, the breakdown is Not Coming In Dubai. More specifically, “No Call Details for the selected Account and period.”

But Itisalot is adamant that the call breakdown is not available. “Definitely within two days,” I was told, with all the confidence of an Itisalot employee who’s heard so much propaganda about how wonderful the organisation she works for is that she believes Itisalot's hubris, and was mortified when her confidence was questioned by a world-weary Goat who has heard such hollow promises repeated before.

Maybe next month I should display the same lackadaisical attitude to payment as Itisalot does to itemised billing.

Edited 10 December to note that the Itisalot website has changed again, and the itemised bill has at last appeared. It was indeed within two days; pity it was ten days late. 

]}:-{>

The trouble with Triple

Click here if you'd like one of these

Beloved Wife and Goat were finally cajoled by Itisalot into getting a fibre-optic cable to deliver all landline-based telecomms to the Crumbling Villa. It's slow; it's expensive. But cheaper than paying for wireless internet plus a separate landline. And basic cable TV was thrown in too. hence 'Triple Play': Telephone, Internet and TV all for a single monthly payment.

And all was well for a few months, until the cable TV stopped working. The Goat got around to calling Customer Care about six weeks ago, and a new set-top box was duly delivered by one of Itisalot's technicians. He said that it would configure itself over the next hour or so, and all would be well.

The following day, the Goat was on the phone to Customer Care again. All was far from well. The replacement set-top box was as dysfunctional as the first.

There followed around two weeks and a dozen appointments for technicians to resolve the problem. Five actual visits later, a tech declared that there was no more he could do, and the complete lack of cable TV was a total mystery. A subsequent technician promised to return the following day with yet another new set-top box, configured for use, and with a working remote control.

But he never showed up, instead choosing to close the complaint. So a couple of weeks later when the Goat rang Customer Care yet again, Itisalot had been under the impression that the problem had been fixed. The Goat theorises that technicians are on some kind of bonus/penalty scheme, and closing a complaint even if it's not fixed results in a new complaint being generated, rather than the technician being berated for his failure to perform.

In fact, three times the Goat's complaints were closed without a technician addressing the problem. Or turning up at the Crumbling Villa. Or phoning the Goat to make an appointment. The absence of a solution was getting beyond irritating.

Enough being enough (and then some), today the Goat undertook to reduce his 'Triple Play' to 'Double Play' (internet and landline only) with the consequent AED40/month reduction, backdated six weeks to when he first reported the problem. He had to go to an Itisalot Business Centre with the set-top box and wait first for twenty minutes, and then for a further thirty, to obtain An Audience With Itisalot.

Far from obtaining his AED40/month reduction in subscription, the Goat is now persuaded financially to keep 'Triple Play', even though part of it doesn't work. The reason?

Itisalot's cajoling way back included a special offer of AED229/month instead of the normal AED299. 'Double Play' is AED259/month, which is indeed AED40 less for no cable TV.

AED229 is £39, which is for up to 1Mbps. How much do you pay for your internet?

It would be ludicrous to hand back the set-top box and pay an extra AED30/month, and in an attack of irony, Itisalot even said that the Goat would have to pay AED100 to downgrade his subscription.

The Goat has packed the useless device away. He'll probably ring Customer Care every now and then, just to see if a technician is ever invented who can actually fix the problem, but he's not holding his breath.

Edited on 23rd October to note that the Goat received an unsolicited SMS from Itisalot on 20th October to advise that a technician would be visiting tomorrow to fix the problem. And to date, the Cable TV still seems to be working. Its only taken 51 days.

]}:-{>

Optical fibre

I don’t actually want a fibre-optic cable into the Crumbling Villa to deliver internets, telephone, and cable TV. When Beloved Wife and I first moved in over five years ago, the only telephone service available was through the execrable Itisalot. Getting a telephone landline presented little difficulty, but internet was more of a challenge owing, apparently, to a lack of capacity at the telephone exchange.

In fact, the Head of Customer Service at Itisalot’s Deira branch had promised internet within two weeks of the application. He subsequently hung up or was otherwise not available whenever I phoned him. This is Head of Customer service; just as well he wasn’t some disincentivised minion.

We got a wireless internet eventually, and it works fine except when the cheapo wire from the squaerial on the roof to a box in the study perishes in the sunshine and has to be replaced with more of the same. Tropical grade co-ax is apparently Not Coming In Dubai.

But leaving well alone isn’t in Itisalot’s business model, it seems. I’d been putting off random “You should migrate to our all-singing and all-dancing eLife service” phone calls for over a year until in October 2012 when, under threat of having the existing connection cut off, I finally said, “OK, you want to install a fibre-optic cable for eLife? Make it so.”

Sadly, Itisalot’s technicians have had extreme difficulty in making it so.

Sometime in October 2012, a team arrived and put new optical fibre cable from the junction box in the street up to a hole in the skirting board under the stairs of the Crumbling Villa. A second team arrived and advised that there was no signal from the telephone exchange. This would be fixed, and then someone would come and fix the modem, and we’d have our eLife.

• Itisalot phoned to make an appointment for 3^rd November 2012, but nobody turned up.
• Itisalot phoned and made an appointment for 12^th November, and nobody turned up.
•  I phoned Itisalot on 29^th November to find out what had happened, and got a vague apology.
•  Itisalot rang on 28^th January 2013 to make an appointment to fix the eLife cable. Never mind that the cable was already fixed, and the problem was at the exchange.
• Nobody turned up on 29^th January. So much for the appointment.
•  Itisalot rang on 4^th February, demanding to know why no-one was at home. We were in Cyprus; I got the technician to make an appointment for 7^th February.
• Nobody came on 7^th February.
•  On 9^th February, a technician rolled up and declared that the problem was at the exchange, not in the Crumbling Villa. Thanks, but we knew this in October.
•  Finally, on 20^th February, an Itislalot technician got a signal from the exchange. He fitted a box to the wall at a jaunty angle, and then disappeared, promising that the modem would be fitted by another team ‘tomorrow.’
• Tomorrow never comes. On 24^th February a different team phoned, promising that they’d come today at 2pm. At 2:30pm they rolled up and declared that a different team would come “Later today without fail” to fix the modem. Exactly the same story spun the previous week.

Here is where I lost my rag. I tried to complain, but was first told that I’d have to give the technician’s phone number to the Itisalot call centre. When I called back, I was transferred to Complaints. Here, they declared that they had no record of my eLife application. This is weird, as the previous call person I’d been talking to had found the details on the same computer database. I’m forced to conclude that lying to customers is endemic and not limited to technicians.

Aside from the repeated lying and theft of my life days at a time, why should I worry? I neither want nor need cable television, and the current internet and telephone systems work adequately. OK, eLife would marginally reduce the monthly payment, and I can buy a Scotch egg with the monthly saving.

So the telecom company can continue on their inefficient way as far as I’m concerned. Phone and make appointments if you must, but I’m past staying at home to await your non-arrival. If you can’t arrange and then keep your own appointments, there’s little reason why I should hold up my side of the bargain. It is surely not in Itisalot’s financial interest to pay contractors to make repeated visits to customers’ houses to undertake the same task. And it certainly flies in the face of customer satisfaction to employ people who lie to customers.

Edited 2nd March to add that: Itisalot rocked up at 1150 today, having phoned me at 9am. Just over two hours later they've gone, leaving me with a working internet (q.v.) and a landline and cable TV decoder that will come on line 'in 24 hours.' Now I have to visit Itisalot to get my old connection cancelled or I'll be paying for both. Oh, and while the guys were here I received an SMS to say that they'd be arriving on 9th March. I wonder if anyone will turn up?

]}:-{>

My Little Smartphone

The Goat has been dragged kicking, butting and bleating into the 21^st century. Having had his LG handset suddenly go wrong and then refuse to behave itself even after being reset, rebooted, and even left overnight with the battery out, it was deemed a DBJ (dustbin job), and the Goat headed off to Carrefour to obtain a basic dual-SIM handset. He was sold one, which he then contrived to lose a week later. Whoever picked it up and immediately removed the SIM cards, the Goat hopes you’re happy with your new toy, you thieving git: a more reasonable person might have phoned ‘Home’ and attempted to return the handset to its rightful owner.

One trip to Dubai and two showings of his Emirates ID Card later, the Goat had replacement SIM cards for both Itisalot and d’oh, and it was time to find a new handset.

On the recent Japan trip, the Goat’s phone hadn’t worked at all, whereas Beloved Wife’s quad-band handset had quite happily connected to phone and internet. So the quest was to obtain a quad-band, dual-SIM device. It transpires that a lot of allegedly quad-band handsets are either 900MHz/1800MHz (which is fine for Europe and the middle east) or 850MHz and 1900MHz (which is what is needed for the USA and Japan). The Goat eventually ended up with the most basic smartphone he could find. It’s a Samsung that comes with a touch screen, GPS, 3G, WiFi, MP3 player and, once the Goat figures out how to use the handset properly, an app to do the ironing and wash the car.

Based on Beloved Wife’s experience with call trees, a real, physical keypad was also a must-have. Fighting the screen during a call in a vain attempt to Pless 1 for Engrish is something without which the Goat can do.

Unfortunately, it has so far been impossible to take some friendly advice and find a screen protector. The Samsung Service Centre staff looked at the Goat as if he’d asked for a lightly-grilled weasel, and none of the shops in Doha’s mobile phone souq had one either. One sales lack-of-assistant was busy sticking a screen protector on another customer’s machine before turning to the Goat and asserting he hadn’t got any. A BlackBerry 9900’s display is almost the same size, but the cutouts for the speaker are in the wrong place. Arse.

Getting more exasperated, the Goat eventually bemoaned this sorry state of affairs in the last shop. The Egyptian American behind the counter grinned, shrugged his shoulders, and said: “Welcome to Doha!” He cut down an iPhone screen protector to an approximately correct size and applied it as a temporary measure. Free of charge; he wouldn’t accept any form of payment. So much for a gem of advice offered ten minutes earlier. “You can’t cut it down. It won’t work if you cut it.”

So the Goat’s touch screen is protected for now. Maybe, just maybe, there’ll be something more suitable for sale in Dubai. Or America. Or internet mail order. As is apparently traditional, there’s loads of stuff for sale in Doha but little in the way of after-sales service.

]}:-{>

Another dissatisfied 'Valued Customer'

I should like to thank my internet service provider, Itisalot, for the continued sterling efforts in providing and maintaining my connectivity. I should particularly like to express my gratitude to the Customer Services Manager at Itisalot’s Deira office who promised in July 2007 that ADSL would be connected to the Crumbling Villa “within two weeks.” He even gave me his business card. I am sure that his rejecting every call I made to the number on the card over the following several months was completely justified.

How wonderful then that Itisalot provided broadband at the Crumbling Villa in February 2009, a mere nineteen months after the initial application and only six weeks after cancelling a subsequent application. I was of course spared the inconvenience of being advised that my application had been cancelled. Itisalot was happy to accept my third application after I had queued for only 90 minutes at the Al Twar office.

Compared with dial-up that frequently dropped its connection, my new broadband was indeed “surprisingly fast at amazing low prices” as per Itisalot’s adverts back in 2006. My 1Mbps connection uploads data at an astounding 100kbps: at least 20 times the speed of dial-up, and I have occasionally seen downloads at nearly 700kbps.

Daily Telegraph 6^th Aug 2009

As for the cost, a mere Dh2988 per year for unlimited downloads is nothing short of stupendous. To note that British Telecom can provide eight times the bandwidth for a third of the price is to make an unfair comparison. Unlike in the UK where urban development is sometimes centuries old, here in the UAE sufficient new telecommunications infrastructure could not possibly have been installed. The absence of meaningful competition has nothing to do with the usurious tariffs.

I am of course protected from the immorality and corruption so prevalent on the internet. I’m protected, for example, from viewing my own degenerate photographs of mosques in Istanbul and tropical fish that I previously uploaded on to Flickr, and from the expensive and unreliable services offered by VoIP providers.

Having established the broadband account, Itisalot explained how I should go about shutting down the old and now unused dial-up, transferring my email ID to the broadband email inbox. Clearly, making such a complicated series of adjustments will inevitably take several weeks. I was inadvertently misinformed by an enthusiastic Itisalot employee that it would take around two hours. It’s perfectly understandable that the occasional error is made, which is why after three weeks the user ID was changed but not the email ID. After nine personal visits, some very kind gentlemen at the Deira office provided their business cards so that I could follow up progress regarding my application, but these people have regrettably been too busy helping other Valued Customers to answer their telephones or emails.

The Customer Care helpline always provides a very polite answer to my queries. I do not know how many people work in Customer Care, but they are unerringly consistent, undertaking to refer my outstanding complaint to the IT department. I was advised to change my password using the e4me.ae website because a personal visit to an Itisalot office incurs a charge for that service. Consistent as ever, Customer Care advised that my complaint had been referred to IT when Itisalot’s system had after over three weeks failed to authorise the change of password.

Commenting to Customer Care that I was temporarily obliged to use the free WiFi in Times Square mall, as provided by D’uh, it was noted that I could actually use an Itisalot WiFi iZone HotSpot, paying for it at a mere Dh10 per hour from my mobile phone account. How reasonable that I should pay Dh249 per month for a non-existent service, plus Dh10 per hour to the same corporation to get any service at all. To say nothing of the FourBucks coffees and time and effort involved with making a special trip to a hotspot. Such a shame then that “There was a problem processing your request. Please try again.” And again. And again. Customer Care helpfully suggested that as the Deira City Centre iZone HotSpot was, erm, broken, perhaps I would like to try Ajman. Absolutely. I have nothing better to do with my Fridays than to cruise the UAE looking for somewhere to connect to the internet.

I am pleased to note that an unexpected telephone call from Itisalot last Tuesday confirmed that the issues have been corrected. It has only taken sixty-one days. I speculate idly whether my recent submission of the complaint details to the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has in any way influenced Itisalot’s Customer Care actually to sort out the problem and then to phone me several times and to be extremely helpful.

Apparently it’s possible to obtain a refund for non-existent internet connectivity. Itisalot conveniently has a mechanism in place, involving faxing to 06 746 0444 an explanatory letter, passport, visa, ID card and DNA sample. It has to be by fax of course, “because billing disputes have to go to the concerned department.” What, by carrier pigeon? Pack llama? It only took three tries before Itisalot’s fax was capable of receiving my written submission. Emailing a scanned version is clearly way too high-tech.

Incidentally, I wonder why D’uh offers such a mediocre WiFi service at Times Square? Because it’s free? As a temporary loss leader, if it were my telco, I’d convince my future customers how good I was by providing the most reliable and blisteringly quick WiFi I could possibly manage. What worries me is this might indeed be the case.

Edited 25 August to add:

The iniquities of Itisalot continue apparently without respite. I have just received hard copies of the current internet and telephone bills.

Changing the password through e4me.ae is supposed to be free. Yet according to the Helpless Desk at Customer Care 101 the billing computer went mad. Not only did I get charged for the password change, but Itisalot created three additional dial-up accounts and charged Dh50 to each of them.

It is a known issue. I was told that the computer had done this to everyone on 7th July. Itisalot has, I note, not seen fit to correct the error. It is incumbent on the overcharged subscribers to try to get their money back. A greater cynic than I might infer that Itisalot is hoping that some of the subscribers might simply pay the overcharge.

]}:-{>

Show them you're cross

Thinking about buying a new smart phone?
An iPhone or perhaps a BlackBerry?
Itisalot will want to give you software:
A software patch “for switching to 3G.”

That patch is made for spying
And that’s just what it’ll do.
Upload it, and your telco
Will be monitoring you.


It costs too much to rent palatial villas,
At least, if you’re a single family.
But if it’s big enough, perhaps by sharing,
Two live together, independently.

Except that it’s illegal.
Municipality
Says, “Here’s a clar’fication
Issued since February.”


This evening I’m going to the gold souq
To buy a piece of tasteful jewelry.
In Sharjah I am not allowed to wear it
Because of gold chain’s illegality

If wearing gold’s offensive
Do up your buttons quick!
If you dress like Tom Jones
You will be hauled off to the nick.

Appropriate acknowledgements to Lee Hazlewood who wrote the original, and Nancy Sinatra who made it famous.

]}:-{>

Fantabulous

The Goat would like to take this opportunity to record that he considers Itisalot a fabulous^[1] organisation. Continuing the saga of moving an email account name from Ye Olde Dialle-Uppe to broadband, it turns out that for various unfathomable reasons it’s “not possible” to have a user name of fewer than nine characters. Actually, having penetrated the clouds of obfuscation, the Goat learned that the main user name can have seven characters, or even fewer. Additional email addresses under the same account - plus any aliases - must have at least nine characters.

In a fantastic^[2] display of customer service, Itisalot eventually accepted hand-delivered application forms (along with passport copy, visa page, signed affidavit from male relative, No Objection letter from sponsor…) to shut down the Dialle-Uppe account and rename the broadband with the same name. At 8:00am on 17th June, this process would take “two hours”. Nine telephone enquiries, six personal visits to the Deira golf-ball, and a fortnight later, there remain “technical problems.” Magic^[3]!

On the subject of magic^[3], The Goat was gratified to receive in his newly-named nine-characters-or-more inbox an electronic missive allegedly from Itisalot that advertises internet HotSpots: “Click here”.

D’oh! This is the same Itisalot that asks us not to click on email links lest they are part of someone’s phishing expedition. The suspected spam was of course immediately forwarded to Itisalot.

[1]‘Fabulous’ adj. Barely credible; not corresponding to acknowledged facts or criteria.
[2]‘Fantastic’ adj. Lacking in reality, substance or genuineness.
[3]‘Magic’ adj. Technology that you don’t understand.

]}:-{>

A bout time

Experiences dealing with Officialdom have led me to submit for consideration a new collective noun. A ‘pod’ of dolphins, a ‘gaggle’ of geese and even a ‘flange’ of gorillas are well known. In the light of sub-prime and credit-crunch I recently even heard of a ‘wunch’ of bankers.

But the collective noun I wish to propose is a ‘bout’. Not as in a ‘bout’ of influenza; the word should be used when describing repeated failure of officialdom to get its collective act together.

Thus by way of example: “I have just experienced a bout of DEWA” or “Did you finally sort out your bout of Traffic Police?” My own most recent was a bout of Etisalat.

In short, I checked my email at 8:00am on Monday. At 11:00am when I tried to check it again, the ‘Username or Password is not recognized’. I phoned the Helpless Desk on 101.

“We can see that you have paid for that email account, Mr Goat, but we can’t see it. We’ll investigate and… [gulp!]…call you back.”

Disappointingly, although unsurprisingly, I’ve not been telephoned. On my way home from work I dropped into an Etisalat Business Centre, where I was told pretty much the same thing: “The system shows that you have paid for the email box, but we can’t see the box itself. Despite this being Customer Service, we are actually unable to offer any service to you as a customer beyond a slightly uncomfortable green chair. You will have to go to the main branch in Deira. Don’t worry, they’re open until 8:00pm.”

And in Deira, pretty much the same story but with the added variant: “…and we can’t do anything about it because it’s not normal office hours.”

A brief summary of the situation so far:-

• I pay for an email account, which I’ve used successfully up to 8:00am Monday.
  
  
• Etisalat shuts it down “because it’s not been used for four months.” [utter tosh]
  
  
• I am obliged to go to the main branch, at personal inconvenience, where I learn that…
  
  
• Etisalat is unable to resurrect the account.
  
  
• Any and all emails received since Monday morning have been lost forever.
  
  
• I have to shut down the account, then get the email address released before opening a new inbox with the same name some 48 hours later.
  
  
• I can’t have my old email address anyway, because Etisalat now demands a minimum of nine characters.
  
  
• This means that I now have to go and change my email ID on the RTA website, Facebook, et cetera. I assume that it’s possible to do this.

Remember here is a service that I pay for. It’s not free email from Google, Hotmail or Yahoo.

For anyone who’s not worked it out yet, ‘bout’ is derived from an acronym that does not yet exist at AcronymFinder.com :

Bunch Of Useless Tossers.

]}:-{>

All together now...

The fashion for satirical ditties continues unabated...

(Who wants to be a millionaire?)

Who'd like a link that's proxy-free?
I would!
To utilise VoIP?
I would!
Can I view pictures on display in FlickR
And reunite friends
Who are scattered afar?

Who'd like to share a video?
I would!
Then to YouTube I ought to go!
I would,
But sites are blocked by my ISP;
They would!
They're playing the game 'Monopoly'.


Who wants to download some email
I do!
At a pace faster than a snail?
I do!
Doesn't seem likely in this dry desert land,
And that's even though
I paid for broadband.

When I think it can get no worse,
I do
Oft use bad language, swear and curse,
I do.
Can competition cure all my woes?
Aye, Du
Has got to be better, I suppose.

Let's play Monopoly

The local telecomms monopoly continues to push its broadband special offer. Al Shamil, 'Surprisingly fast at amazing low prices' is a limited period offer that Etisalat has been plugging hard for months with no sign of the advertising campaign abating in the near future.

Why is Etisalat continuing to peddle the 'amazing low prices' that are clearly anything but low? Is it entirely because there is a total lack of competition?

A cursory comparison with broadband offers in the UK easily demonstrates the magnitude of Etisalat's less than realistic price structure. Aside from a 'mere' 2Mbps being the maximum speed on offer, Al Shamil is typically between two and three times the cost of the average broadband rates offered in the UK.

Or are British broadband providers cutting their own throats? Somehow I doubt it.

I have not included the effects of British 17.5% Value Added Tax. Neither have I considered the costs of wireless modems, installation, free or reduced rate months, or any bundled software.
I would however concur with Etisalat's claim that Al Shamil broadband is 'amazingly fast'. Compared with the dial up that typically runs at about 3kbps, even a 256kbps would feel blisteringly quick.

However, until Etisalat proposes a more realistic broadband pricing structure I shall continue with ye olde dial uppe at home. As my monthly internet bill is usually around AED 50 (less than £10) it is questionable whether I need broadband at all. If I do need a broadband connection I can always take my laptop to Starbucks and use wireless broadband at the same hourly rate as home dial up.

I contacted Etisalat through their official feedback website on 7th March:

"All Al Shamil broadband monthly rates are typically between two and three times those on offer in UK. A more realistic pricing structure (say Dh80/month for 256kbps to Dh120/month for 2Mbps) would make Al Shamil a much more attractive proposition."

Unsurprisingly, more than three weeks later I have yet to receive a response.

We've all got to start somewhere

Here goes with my first ever blog entry on my first ever blog. It's something of an experiment, and will make a change from posting long e-mails to all and sundry.

Maybe I'll get things out of my system by jotting them down here. Who knows? Someone else might even find my various random jottings amusing enough to read.

In due course I'll post some photographs. I can't access my old FlickR account because my ISP has banned the site - and there is a monopoly on internet service provision in the United Arab Emirates. Gosh, thanks, Etisalat! No matter; there are ways around this problem, and you are reading one of them.


I have just spent the past hour downloading Picasa and uploading an avatar. Part of the problem is the newness of all this, another is my dial-up connection (Dial-Up. How quaint!) but a third is Operator Error. One of my work colleagues calls me a Liveware Virus - someone who can't do anything with a computer without it going wrong. It isn't true. I deny everything. As usual.

]}:-{>