YES I KNOW…. I have been very very bad at updating my blog, but wait for it….. Drumroll….. I HAVE AN EXCUSE!!! I have not had internet for a long long time…
Egypt knows how to mess with you, stress you out, make you absolutely furious!!! Dont worry I will explain all to you now…
Well the first issue I have had the last weeks is with the ‘Academy’ I was taking jewelry courses in…. I shall explain the whole shocking story when the money issue is over…. Hopefully that will happen this year, but its Egypt, so who knows…
Then I have had a problem with internet… I have USB sticks as I have not been able to get ADSL… EVERYTHING takes sooooo freaking long here… NOTHING is easy, so just get that piece of fact right… Let me try to tell you this frustrating piece of internet story!
I have a USB from Vodafone… The internet is suuuuuper slow and the maximum usage is 6GB… After this it is possible to add 1GB extra… I don’t understand the reasoning behind this… So why not offer your customers 7GB and say that when this is used you can’t get no more internet… The crazy thing is that after this 7GB you can’t recharge or pay for more internet, until the end of the month! Why? Just because…. So when my Vodafone stick expired I just got another one with 6GB! Hahaha tricked you stupid Vodafone! Then when the month finished I couldn’t recharge the old USB because I had not used it for a long time… You know what Vodafone? I didn’t use it because there was no usage left you idiot… What you want me to do with a stick that has no internet? Cook it in some chicken stock and then deep fry it, and it eat for lunch? Is this considered USING it??
So then I went to another company called Etisalat…. Just like EAT and Salad…Eatsalad- Etisalat… Some healthy propaganda happening in the mobile industry in Egypt… I got a USB stick from Etisalat with 12GB, which was their maximum… When I finished the quota on the stick it stopped working… At this point in time my boyfriend and I decided to change our mobile contract from Vodafone to Eat-a-salad… Vodafone had been charging us with thousands of Egyptian Pounds in phone bills every month… This was ridiculous because my boyfriend didn’t call much. I only called my boyfriend, who was my ‘free number’ so I could talk to him for 5000 minutes… No we did not exceed this… so to get a phone bill of thousands was just crazy… the phone bill was higher now that I am in Egypt than when I was in Norway and he would call me?!?! No Egypt, or rather Vodafone, YOU don’t make sense!
So we went to Etisalat and got two new numbers, one for his Iphone and one for my absolutely BEAUTIFUL Blackberry!! AAAAAh this is so boring…. Haha but I have to explain everything for the point of the story…. So we spent about an hour signing contracts, waiting, giving an ID, waiting, getting the new sim cards, waiting…. then we were told the sim cards now work… I was in complete shock! No way Egypt…. You really surprised me this time… New sim cards, working right away… WOW, so no problems Etisalat?!?! Well… hold on a minute, NOTHING as I have mentioned before is easy in Egypt, just because!
Sim card didn’t work… We got two free internet sticks with the new contracts, they didn’t work either… So my boyfriend called them… First customer service said we had to call the ‘special’ customer service due to our high phone bills from Vodafone, we were now special customers in Etisalat…. The special customer service checked and said he couldn’t find anything wrong so the sim cards should be activated before the 12 of this month… The 12 would be one week after we called… The next day my boyfriend called again… Our old numbers would be deactivated soon so we couldn’t wait for a bowl of salad to decide to activate our sim cards… ESPECIALLY when the guy in the shop told us the sim card was already active… So was it active when we left the shop and then deactivated when we inserted the sim card into the phone? Or did the shop assistant LIE to us? Whatever it was, it doesn’t look good for the company!
So from the day we got our new sim cards my boyfriend has been speaking to two customer service people per day.. Nobody can tell us why the sim cards have not been activated… They say: There might be a problem… NO SHIT!??!?! Of course there is a problem, we are calling to check what the hell it is so we can FIX IT!!!!! I’m not calling customer service everyday just to have a little chat about telecommunications…. All they can tell us is there is a problem, nobody knows what it is, but they can make a request to fix it…. This has been done 5 times… So there are 5 requests waiting to be solved! GREAT… That really helps when I don’t have a working phone, and no internet… Thanks for the lovely customer service…. I could do a better job… A buddhist monk that has never seen a mobile phone or a sim card could do a better job!
So yeah, that’s my little frustration of the last week… Well I say little but it is huge when you don’t have internet, mobile, whatsapp, blackberry service…
Come on Egypt… Just make life a little bit easier…
Why make it straight when you don’t have to?!
In case of emergency, you can jump for the electrical outlet right beside the door!
Femieshe 
OMG I don’t know how you put up with it, I’d go crazy!
I go a little crazy inside myself! 🙂 then i remind myself that no crazy Egyptian cares if i go crazy! 🙂 Thank you for reading my blog!
Does it c
How much does it cost you to call the US? My bill would be sky high from calling all my friends 🙂
I never call the US. Most of my friends are in Egypt, and for the other I use Whatsapp, and skype of course with my family! But calling internationally is that that expensive compared to outside… When I lived in Norway and my husband was in Egypt we would call eachother, and my phone bill would always be about 1000-1500 LE MORE than his, even though we called eachother the same amount of minutes! 🙂