Seeing the damning reports about Telefonica worried us as we prepared to begin the move to Spain ‘permanente’. And whilst I realize that we may still have service and bills traumas as outlined by various poster in the past on this forum I reckon to give some credit where it is due to provide a little balance.

We rang Telefonica from UK about 2weeks before arriving to our house here in the inland Alicante region (we have used periodially for 2 years with only mobile so far) tentatively enquiring about reconnection of a long-defunct line.

They said no simple reconnection possible but we’d need a ‘new line’ from the telegraph pole...quoted upto 15 days. Optimistically we gave a friend’s number in case of contact before we arrived...and sure enough they sent technicians in a week to put up the line...BUT sadly the pole was ‘damaged’ so they could not progress.

On arrival we were told this story - so once again we called them about a prediction of timing for pole repairs. Whilst they said it could be upto 3 months in fact they came the next day at 8am to ‘size things up’. With a promise of ‘manana’ for the repairs. Although expecting a longer delay they came the following day ‘en masse’ with a new pole and 6 men with hoists and gear and a new line was thread across to the house...but with a promise of ‘manana’ for internal connection.

After a few days waitng my wife called them again...the slight stumbling block here was about a week of daily calling with no pick-up on Telfonica’s Customer service lines!! (must be BUSY we thought!) But persistence paid off and after a chat with a very helpful Rep who identified that the original order had been canceled when the damaged pole business occurred, so resurrecting the order he said upto 15 days and we’d be connected.

The next day (TODAY) I got a call on my mobile to meet the technical support to lead him onto the Campo to our house. An hour later all wired up, phone and ADSL connected...so I can log-on and post this message!

Pretty efficient so far I reckon! (And as I write this they just now called to enquire about when we want the 2nd line we have enquired about for my Mother’s casita!!!)

No doubt we will have our frustrations in the future - but for now we have to give 10/10 for effort and efficiency! Maybe it’s the way my wife schmoozed them in her native Spanish but it has to be said...Well done Telefonica!

Good luck to anyone out there just embarking on the telephonic quest...we hope yo have the same efficient service!

druk

Well… the same kind of thing happened to me - actual good service from telefonica.

I recently moved house and wanted to take my phone line with me. You can pay 50 euros to keep the same number, provided the new location is in the same area...or you can say that you’re leaving the country and transfer the line to a ‘new’ customer, in this case my husband, and pay 36 euros and get free line rental for 6 months. Not actually a bad deal as you get to keep the same number. Anyway, they said it would take about a fortnight to transfer the line so I asked for it to be done 3 weeks before moving to the new house (which we already had the keys for) assuming it would take at least a month judging by past telefonica performance. Naturally, just when I didn’t want to see an example of their efficiency, they arrived two days later at the new house, fixed the line and cut off the old one leaving us without a phone line for just over two weeks!
However, my friend did the same thing and a month later is still without the new line as apparantly the house (which is in the middle of the town) doesn’t have any phone wires connected to it as they’ve run out (or something), so all is not lost and telefonica can still meet our expectations!

Hi!
A couple of years ago I had a business on the Costa Blanca that relied on telephones quite a lot. Everyday for 30 days I was told that someone would be round tomorrow to solve the problem of the telephones not working- of course no one came untill a month and a half later!

After 10 days without a phone line after a storm, it’s finally back up and running. “Within 24 hours” seemed to be a buzz phrase from their call centre having contacted them on each of those 10 days. Mind you, half the phones in our village were knocked out and I can distinctly recall having a similar problem with BT back in the UK.

When our line was originally installed, they were very efficient, it’s just when they have freakish weather or some other problem, that things seem to take time… funnily enough, just like BT in the UK