Life: Idiotropic

I signed up for holiday reminders for Spain. I get email reminders now almost daily. Today is Nuestra Senora de la Bien Aparecida in Cantabria. I'm not in Cantabria, but who's going to bet we have fireworks here tonight anyway? I'll bet you my last phone bill we do!

Is there such a thing as a fair, honest, no out to get rich off of you phone company? There? Here? Anywhere?

To spare you the details, we essentially had our phone and internet service shut off for 4 days. I paid my bill, but there was an outstanding bill from June (when I was in Germany) that wasn't paid by the previous tenants. Those tenants didn't bother to turn off the phone or anything else either, so when I called Telefonika to give them my name and change the account over, I "assumed" the responsibility of any unpaid debts. They didn't tell me this until after they shut off my service though. Nice, huh? Apparently this is normal.

Now while I'm pretty irate that I had to shell out over $100 for someone else's bill in order to have a service I've been paying for, there were some great things learned here and I do have to be thankful for those:

• First, Spain is A LOT more efficient at restarting a service than Germany could ever hope to be. I paid the bill with cash at the post office and my service was back within 2 hours.
• Although my phone service was off, I could still receive calls. That was great!
  
• And, although I couldn't call any normal numbers, I could still call emergency numbers and the phone company itself
• Who has an English department that is fairly helpful - makes sense, half of England lives here.