It’s quite hard when the biggest investment you’ve ever made is happening 1000 miles away and you rely on emails to know what’s going on. Even harder when your email isn’t working! Since we returned from Italy there were continuous problems and I spent hours on the phone to BT trying to sort them. One guy insisted that the problem must be in Outlook and so I should get on to whoever supplied the software (told him it was bought from BT). I had to be very assertive to get put through to a supervisor (“I have already spoken to supervisor and he agrees with me it is a Microsoft problem”) but I stand my ground and eventually am put through to the second tier support (i.e. the people who actually know what they are talking about.) They still don’t solve the problem but, by doing it using two different mail clients (Outlook and Outlook Express), under two different operating systems (XP and Vista) on two different machines, I am able to prove that the problem is nothing to do with any software or configuration on my PC. The conclusion is that it must be an ISP problem but as it is an intermittent fault and is not manifesting right now they can’t take it further. I suggest the other explanation is that the problem could be in the router and am told this cannot be the case – I should call back when the problem occurs again (which it does every few hours). Even if it can’t possibly be in the router my experience, going back to programming on Cobol in the seventies, tells me to try the impossible so I power down the router and leave it off overnight. Switch everything on again in the morning and it all works and hasn’t missed a beat since. I phone BT to tell them and they still insist it can’t have been in the router but, if it wasn’t, it’s one hell of a coincidence isn’t it?
The result of all this (apart from a huge amount of wasted time) is that I don’t see an email from Gianluigi with the preventivo (quotation) from Il Mobile, the company who will manufacture the windows and doors. That puts a 2 week delay in the process which could give us problems later.
Apart from that, we’ve arranged to pay the contractors and other suppliers - Luca the lawyer is doing that one our behalf - and exchanged loads of emails with Gianluigi on exact specifications. It’s not easy explaining how you want a room wired so I’ve drawn a diagram which I hope he understands.
We’ve also had to work out how we want the kitchen laid out (so the plumber and electrician can get on). The kitchen people we saw in Sarnano never got back to us despite several reminders. So we still have to sort all that out. We visit our local Ikea, in England, to have a look at what they have to offer. We really don’t want an Ikea kitchen because that’s what everybody does and out house has to have an edge over the competition. But, anyway, we should have a look. To be honest we find it rather disappointing and the quality doesn’t seem as high as we would have expected. We’ve also heard bad things about installation problems. We’ve been very decisive about most things but we really don’t know what we want in the kitchen. Should it be traditional or modern? Fully fitted or freestanding?
We arrange a visit for the middle of May to check on progress and sort out kitchens and, hopefully get some furniture too. Flights to Rome are hideously expensive at the moment so we book Stansted-Ancona and, since Stansted is a good 3 hours from home, arrange to stay in a Travelodge just off the M11.
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