“AFTER reading yet another complaint letter about OTE’s failures and its broken promises, and after I have been struggling – yet again – for nearly six weeks and some 30+ phone calls to get OTE to ‘turn on’ my new ADSL connection in my Athens office (it only took four weeks before my home connection was working), I want to make some points about OTE. In my experience (as a telecoms consultant working in the UK, Europe and Greece), the problems OTE customers experience are symptomatic of a cultural malaise in OTE in almost all customer-facing roles – the simple things don’t get done properly; the customer is never right (even when he/she clearly is); “it’s not my problem (it’s OTEnet’s, or OTE’s, or Connex’s – as if they were separate companies), so call someone else”; “there’s nothing I can do” (even though they could try calling back, taking responsibility and ownership for a problem, escalating the problem and even fast-tracking a solution).”

The above is an extract from a letter by Michael Cooper published in a recent edition of The Athens News.. if it’s a familiar sounding tale, then perhaps you would like to help to try and turn this problem around.

Ideally, and officially, OTE are required to investigate and hopefully fix internet line problems within 48 hours. As many of us know to our cost, this rarely happens, the scenario detailed above is much more familiar.

I have it on good authority that here on Paros OTE routinely close outstanding fault reports after 48 hours whether they have been fixed or not.

This ridiculous situation contributes to the farce as your internet provider, Conn-X for instance, believe your problem to have been fixed, whilst you are all too aware that it hasn’t.

In order to try and apply some pressure to improve the situation, if you have recently had or are having connection problems, please fill in the form here.

I can’t promise to help individual problems, but I hope with enough collated reports, we might be able to change the situation for the better.

The best advice at the moment for solving your own difficulty is to go to OTE in Parikia and fill in a refund claim form for the time your DSL service isn’t working – enough of these falling on an accountant’s desk might help – I got a refund for 7 weeks earlier this year.