Yeah! We Have a Telephone

Another victory! After thirty-five days in Recife, we finally managed to get the home telephone line (mostly) installed. For some reason, which still defies me, this was no small accomplishment. After having been here for a week or so, I called the telephone company and requested a residential line. Now, the first complication was the fact that I requested that the line be registered under the office's name and not my own name. Rest assured, Canadian tax-payers, that we pay for our own phone service. However, our residential lines overseas often tend to be under the corporate name in order to make things easier for personnel changes. Considering the fact that one cannot request a phone line in Brazil without a CPF [personal registration number] and the fact that CPFs take months to acquire, it makes a lot more sense to have the residential lines under the corporate name, otherwise my eventual successor would have to wait for several months before being able to have a phone.

Now, my first attempt to request the line ended in extreme failure. Upon running a check of the office's CNPJ [the corporate equivalent of a CPF], I was told that the office had an outstanding bill to an undisclosed service provider, and that with this outstanding debt, the request could not even be saved in the computer. The outstanding bill was not with the telephone company and the company did not have any way of informing me as to the amount of the bill or the entity to which it was owed. Just that somewhere, somehow, Canada owed money to someone. A quick call to the embassy assured me that they would run a check of their bills and see if anything was outstanding. Who knows? It could have been a R$10 debt holding me up.

Leaving an appropriate amount of time for bill paying, I called back and requested the line again a week later. At this point, I discovered that the phone company could not install a residential line under a commercial name, meaning that I would have to pay quite a bit more in monthly fees for the line, as well as for any internet connection that I would eventually install. Not wanting to pay more that I had to, I decided to get the line in my own name. I gave all the necessary information to the attendant and she indicated that the company would call me within seven days to arrange the first (!) step of the installment of the line. Five days later, I called the company to see if they had an idea when the technician would be able to come to the apartment. The polite answer was that we were still in the seven day period and the company would call me when they were able to come. My polite response that we were coming into the weekend and I wondered how they would call me to inform me that they were coming when I didn't have a phone did not garner much sympathy. Of course, no technician arrived.

On Day Eight [hmmmm .... whatever happened to that seven day limit, I wonder?] I called the company and asked when the technician would be coming. A quick check on the file number indicated that they HAD CANCELLED MY REQUEST. Yes, cancelled. Gone. Finito. Terminado. Cancelado. Annulé. The whole shebang. No memories of my request. Now apparently the request was cancelled because of an irregularity in my CPF. Of course, it would have been nice if the phone company had informed me of this without me having to call them to figure out why they hadn't shown up at my house, but I digress .....

Later that day, the Consulate checked the status of my CPF and found that there was nothing wrong with it. Sigh. I called the company back to re-request the line and found that the “irregularity” was that the name I had given to the phone company did not match the name on my CPF, so they cancelled the request. Not that I mean to poke holes in this process, but is it not clear that Name Middlename Lastname is the same person as Name Lastname when all the other details line up – birthday, address, mother's full name, father's full name [oh yes, these are details that one has to give all the time in Brazil!]? I suppose I should have known that I had to give my whole name to the phone company, but the thought really hadn't crossed my mind at the time.

Okay ... so the line is reordered, and plead as I might, there is no way for us to get around the seven day wait for the technician. Thankfully the company calls on Day Four and indicates that they will come the next day, Day Five, at 2pm. Hurray! At this moment, I also learn that in addition to photocopies of all my documents, I need to provide a proof-of-address. Seeing that we have only been here a few weeks and haven't yet managed to hook up any services, a proof of address is actually a challenging thing to procure. However, miraculously [really, the only miraculous part of the story], the condominium association managed to provide a declaration in record time and the day was saved! And then we waited. And waited. And waited. And waited some more. 2pm. 3pm. 4pm. 5pm. 6pm. 7pm. 8pm .... No technician. No phone. And of course, no explanation.

Three days later, on the newest Day Eight, the company called the office to inform me that they would be able to come the next day to install the line. Feeling a little bit feisty, I informed them that we could not wait around the house all day for people who never showed up and that, in fact, we would not be home the next day at all. I realise that this wasn't the best thing to say to a service provider that we actually do want to show up, but truly, there would be no one home on the morning of Day Nine and I was tired of waiting for people who never show up [this will become a recurring theme ....]. The company said that this was okay, since they didn't actually need access to the apartment, that everything would be done on the outside of the building and that we could leave our photocopied documents with the concierge. Hurray! Feistiness saves the day! Well .... 8am Tuesday morning, the doorbell rang and it was the technician. Double Hurray!! [and double exclamation marks!!]. By 10am, the technician had come and gone and we now had one functioning phone jack. I think that he felt sorry for us and installed the one jack. Normally in Brazil, the phone company installs the exterior lines and the client has to call a second service provider who then does all kind of funny things with wires inside the house to connect each individual phone jack. Quite odd, but we are not to complain since we now have a phone! Now I am glad that I was home, since in actual fact, the technician really did need access to the apartment. Yeah for eight in the morning!

Next stop ... internet access!! Hopefully the adventure level of procuring internet will be minimal, although I do know that we might have to wait yet another seven (?) days AND we still need that second technician to come in to hook up the phone jack in the office prior to the internet technician coming in .....

post scriptum: Now in all honesty, this was a rather frustrating exercise. However, every time that I thought that things couldn't get worse, I would think back to some Salvadoran friends that live in El Salvador's second largest city. These friends had no phone due to the fact that they were not home the day that the phone company passed through their neighbourhood giving out phone numbers and installing the lines. Try as they might, there was no way to obtain a phone line after this day. Being a small and friendly neighbourhood, my phoneless friends were able to use their neighbour's phone to make calls, and every time that the neighbour received a call for them, she would bang on the wall that separated their houses. All this in 1995-6. See ... things could be worse! We also just found out that it used to take six months to get a phone here in Brazil. Essentially the process was i) put your name on a list; and ii) wait until the phone company shows up to install the line. No wonder people here are thrilled with these new and improved seven-day service!

Phew! Long post!