In fact, a new chapter of my saga with Telekom opened four weeks ago when they suddenly blocked my e-mail account. The reason was that my e-mail address had supposedly been used by somebody sending spam mail. Telekom service requested that I scan my PC for viruses, i.e., my antivirus program - a Telekom subscription - does this periodically and automatically and never shows any "negative" results. Furthermore, they asked me to change all my Telekom passwords. Following my compliance, they unlocked my account only to block it again 24 hours later with their old argument. Telekom required the same procedures as before that were followed by a deblocking. This, however, was not for long when they blocked me a third time a day later. Being quite angry, I told them: We cannot continue like this. Since I was insisting, the technicians at Telekom eventually revealed that an Internet provider named "Synacor" in the States had complained about spam mail sent via my e-mail address. What has my e-mail address to do with Synacor? Nevertheless, in the end, Telekom unblocked me permanently by instructing their bot to shut up following any request from Synacor. Anyway, all this leaves a sour aftertaste and remains a mysterious affair.
On August 13, I noticed I no longer had any Internet during the late morning hours. The classical cure to restart a signal synchronization is to switch off the router and, following a short waiting period, repower the device. I recalled a couple of green diodes on my Speedport W 921V showing the various functions, but now all lights had burned out, probably due to the continuous use of the router for more than five years. Eventually, the person on the other end of Telekom's hotline authorized me to fetch a replacement router from a downtown Telekom shop.
Installation of the "new" device was a breeze, all diodes were blinking, and the signal was alright, but the router still would not synchronize. The result was that the person on the other end of Telekom's hotline promised to send a technician to my apartment on August 15, within a time slot from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Extremely unhappy not being able to photoshop, edit web pages, or do online banking, I nonetheless was not without connection to the Internet, using my telephone line for reading or sending e-mails and looking up some news on my iPhone. I consumed more than two-thirds of my 3 GB mobile data plan with Telekom during that period. A connection to the Internet has become as important as water, electricity, and telephone, at least for those who have made it part of their daily life without playing computer games or hunting down Pokémons.
When the technician arrived around 11 a.m. on August 15, he tried this and that. He eventually told me that if he had to touch the router, Telekom would charge me a minimum of 80 euros for his visit. His final conclusion was that my connection identification number was no longer valid. Pardon? Telekom had sent me this top-secret number in 2011 in a registered mail, and I even had not touched the paper on which this number was printed. Nevertheless, the young man provided me with a new identification number, and suddenly, Red Baron was online again.
What was still missing was the official Telekom document containing the new secret identification number in print. Times have changed since 2011. Telekom had replaced the registered mail with a pdf file sent to me as an attachment to an e-mail. To keep the content of the pdf secret, the file would only open with a code sent as an SMS to my mobile phone. When no SMS arrived, I rubbed my eyes. Rereading Telekom's e-mail carefully, I discovered they had sent the code to an unknown mobile telephone number. So I contacted the hotline for the last (?) time, asking them to correct their mistake.
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| I made the "unknown" mobile number illegible; privacy oblige. |
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