I recently made up an interim business card.
Although working for free, I wanted my name out there with the photography work that I've done.
I chose to use Scarlet, a Belgian internet provider for my business email address ... knowing that yahoo and hotmail both lose email occasionally, acknowledging that they don't offer the most business-like email address I could have.
I sent out some photography samples.
No replies from anyone.
I wrote to friends here in Belgium.
Silence.
Finally Gert phoned up the support services last Friday.
Welllll ... they told him, it seems that one of their mail servers fails to allow incoming email ... they would get back to him.
Today it is Thursday, still nothing.
This problem is complicated by the fact that the two language options for negotiating your way into Scarlet support service are French and Dutch and is then further complicated by the fact that you have to wait a sometimes considerable amount of time for an answer.
Fine in New Zealand where calls of this kind are free ... deadly where you pay by the minute in Belgium.
Round one of setting myself up as a business in Belgium has run into problems.
Tomorrow is a new day ...
Scarlet, a Belgian internet provider, has unfortunately a rather bad reputation. They bought ex-Tiscali Belgium (a provider from Italy), who had taken over about 10 small local ISPs.
ReplyDeleteAnd indeed, you can expect the listen to entire mp3's on Scarlet's paid/toll support line.
Probably too late to change, but incumbent operator Belgacom-Skynet (I know, they're 10 EUR more a month) offers much more reliable DSL services.
Take care, make sure not to trip over one of those wires (it actually happended to me once ;)