We were dealt a double whammy leading into the weekend with our Internet down all day and our gas bottles also running out.
Our home Internet piggybacks in on the Telstra line from a provider I have been with a while who are based on the Gold Coast, OnTheNet.com.au
The ADSL Internet dropped out early in the day and still hasn’t come back on now as I am writing this.
This is meant to be a fault on the Telstra side of things with a failure of hardware and the website was saying that normal supply would be back on by 6am this morning.
Well 6am has come and gone and we still have no Internet access and the update on their site is showing that they aren’t sure when it will be coming back on.
On the other hand with regards to the gas, the hugs n kisses was having a shower with the kids and the gas run out.
I thought we had already swapped the bottles over and I was right, no gas.
So it was on the phone to the gas company to find out why we haven’t had a gas delivery since May.
We are with ELGAS and this seems to be a common occurrence with us now and also, after doing a bit of social media snooping, a lot of others too.
I was told by ELGAS that we were on an 8 week delivery plan during winter and 12 week during summer, and that someone had cancelled our delivery for some reason, nice one.
So we haven’t had a delivery of gas since May and I hadn’t cancelled it.
This is leading into a long weekend with Ekka Show Day, birthday party to cook for, no showers and no gas.
The good side of this so far other than the obvious is that communication has still been flowing from OntheNet and also ELGAS.
OnTheNet has an outage page, which you can look at here “I have no internet, OnTheNet”.
This page gives you updates on the estimated time of your service being back on.
This means you don’t have to keep calling OnTheNet to see what is happening and annoying the lovely people in the Tech Services area or front desk reception.
ELGAS was helpful too, after explaining what had happened and also the lady wondering why it had happened I received a call from the local branch.
I’d say they would be getting hammered if we were not the only ones who had their delivery cancelled.
The solution was they have a gas filling truck on the road Saturday, if they can’t fit me in he will come out around 7.30am and put a temporary bottle fill into our gas bottles.
Now call me pessimistic, I was told this story last time ELGAS and had to phone again at 5pm on a Saturday just to see if the truck was far away, and it wasn’t.
We shall see, all of this might be sorted by this morning.
I do have a point to this small rant about service providers in Australia as it seems to be getting more and more common to follow up on these things continuously with many companies.
So what do you do when all the modern conveniences aren’t delivered to our houses?
Get back to basics, here are a few suggestions for you….
No Internet?
- Read a book
- Enjoy the silence and the quiet time with yourself and your thoughts
- Spend more time with your kids
- Go to the library
- Talk to each other
- Play board games
- Watch Free TV
- Listen to the radio
- Go outside
- Ride a bike
- Walk
- Crochet a beanie or a tea cosy
- Catch up on sleep
You see, there is plenty of things you can do, the only thing you may have to do is go around to a friends house if you have to pay an important bill or transfer money somewhere.
No Gas for showers or cooking?
- Learn how to microwave everything
- Make sandwiches
- Pretend you are camping, boil the kettle and have a sponge shower in a bucket
- Visit relatives, “Oh while I’m here I might have a shower”
- Have breakfast for dinner, in other words, swap your meals around
- Don’t shower and wait until you have gas
- Have party nibbles and watch sports on TV
- Have a cold shower
As you see there are plenty of alternatives for you to do if you lose both of these utilities at the same time, and I’m sure you have more suggestions too.
Sometimes we take all these things for granted and when we don’t have them it is hard to not get stressed and feel like your world is going to collapse.
Take a deep breath and think about what our parents would have done or if you are old enough what you used to do as a kid.
In this modern fast paced world we have to get back to basics every now and then, and when you have no Internet and gas it is one of those times….
*Update :
OnTheNet Internet came back on when they said it would, although it was slow at first.
I emailed them and found they had already emailed me with an update.
The service was back to full speed with minimum down time and also great communication.
ELGAS showed up with a temp bottle refill on Saturday morning early.
The main ELGAS truck came on Monday morning, even though they left the screw cap off and both the gas bottles turned off, they still came and filled only one bottle up for some reason.
I am yet to see the bill come through yet via email, but I am sure it is on its way.
So a positive outcome overall but still a phone call to come to ELGAS to see where we are at and why both bottles turned off and only one bottle filled.
