So, apparantly this is all very hard.
Two weeks ago I called Telstra (Thu 6), our phone provider, and said we were moving on the weekend and could they move our phone number across to our new house. It was no problem to move the number (rather than get a new one) as we were still in the same telephone exchange. The person on the other end of the phone hummed and hahed when I gave them our new address and said it was a bit difficult.
He couldn't find us.
Our street address is 2/XX. The house in front of us is 1/XX. But there is also a small block of shops beside us that are 1-6/YY but show up in Telstra's database as XXA-F.
Confusing.
The best thing, he said, was to call Telstra from the phone line in the house which would show which actuall line we were. It seemed like a sensible idea and I agreed.
It took a day or two for me to get to the house only to realise I didn't have the right type of phone plug, and another day to get it. When I pluged a phone in, there was no dial tone. Problem.
So, I called Telstra back. I gave the person who answered the same story and he decided to try and connect us to XXA (our lot number according to council).
The day of connection came and went (Wed 5)with no dial tone, so I called again. There person who answered just said the line would be connected on Friday 7 before 6:00pm. Nothin'.
I called Telstra again and spoke to someone else. He managed to determine that XXA was one of the shops next door so of couse the connection wasn't going to work. He hemmed and hawed and eventually said he'd connect it to the most likely looking blank connection and that it would be done that day (Sat 8). Nada, nought, nothin'.
Monday I called again. Person said it had actually been sheduled for Wed but there were not problems that she could see and it would go ahead. She also sent Sat consultant an e-mail asking why he hadn't called back when he said he would.
Sat consultant left vmail today (Wed 12) at lunch and said it should be connected. Got MrIcy (still at home with busted foot) to check. Zippo.
Called Telstra, again. Got a trainee. This however may be a good thing as he was determined to prove his training was worth it. He established that
http://www.whereis.com/ (that Telstra use for addressing) doesn't know the block our house is on is split in two (Google Maps doesn't know we exist at all, we're just a blank box). Then he realised we have no dial tone as someone mis-connected one of the shops and stole our line.
So he's refunding our transfer fee and setting us up as a new line for free and sending a technician out to set it up. OH THANK YOU!! Of course, this will take another few days. Then, maybe then, we can get our ADSL hooked up.
Maybe.