Pine Lake Resort Internet – Update Day 3

/ Business / , ,

I got a call from another Swisscom tech support engineer today at about 2.30pm – who said he could not log into the device in my unit, so would be passing it back to Pine Lake onsite staff who would replace the unit. (I now wonder why this onsite team could not have visited me on Monday and swapped the device anyway – at least I would have been happy.)

Needless to say I did not get a visit today – now fed up wit this I am going to ask for a refund tomorrow and tell them to forget it.

Saturday evening – paid my money but no internet – I bought 7 days although that is really 6 days in the unit
Sunday – no high speed internet – 5 days left
Monday – no high speed internet – 4 days left

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Pine Lake Resort Internet – Update

/ General /

I waited for the Swisscom tech support to call me back and in the end at about 2pm (after I got nack from a walk) I called them for an update.

Again I got a very polite member of staff who looked up my case on their system, yes it had been escalated to the second line support team, but as of then they had not taken any action on the matter. It was explained to me that they were probably dealing with a higher priority matter. He resubmitted my call so it was again at the top of the call list.

So here I am waiting again – no internet. ICorrect me if I am wrong but I am pretty certain that someone here has made a profit from selling me this service.

Let’s keep a list of days without internet – but paid for.

Saturday evening – paid my money but no internet
Sunday – no high speed internet

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Pine Lakes Internet

/ Business / ,

I went to the reception to report the issues with the sooo slooooow internet and got the expected “here is the Swisscom tech support number call them response”.

However the call is free when made from the phone in my unit – so I called them, and spoke to tech support who listened to the problem. I explained what I did for a living, he skipped any “play book” questioned, checked my IP and DNS with me. Ran some quick tests from his end and with in five minutes had escallated the call to the next level, with a promise of a call back to me later today.

Very good service – let’s see where this goes now.

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Lunch Break

/ Outdoor Gear, Travel, Walking / , , ,

I went for a walk in the outlying limestone area south of the Lake District today. The outcrop of limestone the path followed was an impressive bit of geology, worth seeing.

I came across a hollow just off the path which was a good place to stop for lunch – the stepped rock made for somewhere to put my sitmat.

Although it was a grey day it is interesting country to walk though – when I get back I will try and upload my Memory-map route.

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Wayport Internet Connection

/ Business / ,

I am staying at Pine Lakes, part of Diamond Resorts for the next week and as the resort advertised high speed wireless Internet access (and there is an access point in my chalet with a good connection) I thought I would spend the £27.50 on a weeks access. Not cheap but I thought it would work at least.

DON’T buy it if you stay here.

I have plenty of experience of connecting any device to any wifi network – this took nearly an hour to get the pages to come up and accept my expensive code (expensive if it doesn’t work) and once done it is dead slow. I have been waiting for nearly 15 minutes for my blog homepage to refresh on my laptop. Again if you stay here don’t buy it.

I will take it up with reception in the morning. Watch this space to see how they deal with it.

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Sat Nav App for my iPhone

/ Outdoor Gear, Technology / , , , , ,

Darren from Absolute Electrical Group (http://www.absoluteelectricalgroup.co.uk) recommended to me a free satnav app for the iPhone. Free – it cannot be very good – can it?

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/navfree-uk-roi/id391334793?mt=8

Navfree for UK and ROI takes a while to download and install as it includes the maps so you can use it when offline. When you first run the program you need to go to the Navmii Store, (the shop icon is built into the app), to download the free postcode database. Also available is a safety camera database – this you have to purchase, but it is a bargain,

I tried the software out this morning on the drive from Aviemore to Carnforth and it did as good a job as my Toyota built in satnav – with some additions.

It’s portable so I can also use it in my wife’s car.
One of the navigation options is UK postcodes (something that the Toyota satnav lacks).
Another navigation option is that you can use Google to search for your destination – this needs a data connection.

Using the software is very intuitive and it only took moments to load my destination and set it to navigate. The verbal instructions were very accurate and there are a choice of voices. The map display was clear and easy to understand with only a glance. There is a choice of 2d or 3G and day or night illumination.

The tracking to roads of the car icon seemed accurate as far as I could tell, not being able to stare at screen whilst driving. The vehicle speed is displayed and this too was reasonably accurate – as was the ETA displayed on the navigation screen.

It was also very easy to add destinations to the Favourites list.

Even after such a short test of the software I would recommend anyone with an iPhone to give Navfree a try. It got mebto Carnforth!

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Good Cafe Bad Cafe

/ General / , , ,

I am on holiday at this moment, in Aviemore, Scotland – so it is a good time for me to get this blog going. I thought I would walk in to the village and get some breakfast, went to one cafe where after ten minutes they had not taken my order – even though the place was less than half full and two of the staff had time to discuss their activities from the night before. I am not even sure they knew I had left or not been served.

I then went to “The Coffee Pot” it is the last shop of the block where the Post Office is, heading out of town. I went there last summer and it was good and it did not disappoint today. It is a clean, smart, traditional British cafe with a coal stove to keep the customers warm. They have a short menu done well, some homemade items, a barista so you can get a coffee and the tea comes in pots. I had a breakfast roll, runny fried egg and black pudding and a pot of tea and got change from £5.

Didn’t  realise whilst I was there that they had free wifi.

An excellent place – give Aviemore’s trendy cafes a miss and visit “The Coffee Pot”. Couldn’t find a web site for them but they are on facebook.

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