Internet is finally up (sort of)

We finally have internet at the house, but we ended up switching to another company.  Originally we signed up with this company that had an exclusive deal with the military called TKS.  If you live on base, you are stuck with them.  If you live off base, they are the only company allowed on base to have a shop & advertise.  Their biggest selling point (in my opinion, their only selling point) is they do everything in English, from your bill to their customer service & tech support. I went in on May 9th to sign up, and was told they could come out on May 17th, 2 days after we moved in.  A few days later I got a confirmation letter stating that they'd be out May 24th.  Not great, but it was only a week.  May 24 rolled around, and their stated hours of possibly arriving were from 9am - 4pm.  I waited the entire day and no one showed up...without internet or TV, it was a LONG day.  I called them the next day to see what happened.  Apparently May 24 was a German holiday (their third holiday of the month) so they were closed.  She said when this has happened in the past the customer was automatically re-scheduled for the day after, but our confirmation never made it in to the system for some reason.  I was already having heart burn over paying 55 Euros a month for extremely slow internet and unlimited phone calls to Germany & the US, and this was just making it worse.  The customer service rep said it would probably be another week before they could get out there, but she'd see what she could do and call me back.  4 hours later I get a call back stating the could come out Friday, May 28th. 

On Thursday I happened to be on base for a new comers orientation class (more on that in a future post) so I swung by the TKS shop to confirm that everything was still on for Friday.  The guy there told me there was no appointment in the system so he took my number so he could call me when it was all sorted out.  I left and walked right over to the USO office to use their computers.  I had heard by now what a nightmare TKS was (and experienced it) and how Vodaphone & O2 were much better providers to go with.  While I was researching, the guy called me and said they could confirm an appointment for June 1.  I told him OK, and continued my research.  I eventually found a plan with Vodaphone that gave us 8 times the download speed and 20 times the upload speed, as well as unlimited calls to the US and the EU (instead of just Germany like with TKS) for 45 Euros a month...10 Euros less then what we would have paid with TKS.  The next day I went to the Vodaphone shop in the Schloss Platz area downtown and signed up.  Apparently it's standard fare w/ ISP's here that it takes them 2-3 weeks to activate your connection.  What Vodaphone did to make that easier, though, was give me a USB stick that uses a 3G cellular connection for internet access to tide us over until we have our normal internet connection...something TKS did not offer.  They did something interesting too, something I've never seen in the US.  It's not uncommon for a company to request a security deposit, then give it back when your contract is over.  Vodaphone does that, but when they give it back, they also give back %5 interest.  Once that was done, I went to TKS, canceled our contract with no fee, and was good to go.

So for now we probably can't video chat with anyone due to the connection speed, but we can at least use Skype to call people and of course, I can continue with regular blog posts again. :)

There's a lot to post about...these past 2 weeks have been busy, with things ranging from multiple new comer classes taken to our impromptu trip to Brugge and Bastogne this past weekend.  More to come later this week!