A Bad Application Can Be Worse Than None at All

Recently I changed my mobile service over to Másmovil (Spain).

I discovered I could log onto a client area on their website where I could consult my usage and change configuration.

Since I saw an option to enable roaming, I did so.

Yesterday I got home from a trip to the UK and Greece and in neither location did roaming work. So today I logged on to the Masmovil site again and sure enough roaming is still “enabled”. I rang customer service and told the woman it didn’t work; her response: “But did you ring to confirm that it was enabled? It would have been good to ring to confirm.”

[Now we shall pause while the reader considers the ridiculousness of this statement]

Naturally I responded “Of course not! I enabled it on the website. What is the point of having that option on the website if it doesn’t work?!”

To which she defaulted to “Well I can enable it for you and it will work in future”, and we settled for that.

At the end I said “Well tell your IT department to make that option work or remove it” and she said “Don’t worry” (Spanish: “No te preocupes”, which is sort of like smiling broadly and saying “Of course” while actually meaning “Of course I won’t”).

My colleague Alex overheard the conversation and simply said: “You still don’t know Spain, do you?”