Eirgrid / Vodafone Service - Time Management Problems

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How do people deal with service contractors in this country ?
We have a problem with a landline. Vodafone claim someone (from Eirgrid ?) must call to the house to resolve.
That's OK. BUT - they cannot tell us when !!
They tried to say the best they can offer is a given date - with an approximate FOUR HOUR interval. Say from 09:00h to 13:00h or something similar.
They won't come before 08:30 or after 16:30 !!
How do people in this country deal with this ?
Neither myself or spouse can take a half day's holiday. We don't have family in the area, we don't have neighbours who can take a half day's holiday.

In other places where I have lived, services will arrange a definate time to call - mostly they will actually be there at that time, but should they be delayed then they will phone to excuse and reschedule for an hour later or whatever.
What is it with this country and time-management!
Guess we will be changing to mobile usage if landline cannot be sorted!!

How do others survive this ?

 

[llgon]

I have lived in the UK in the past and have found that when getting calls for services like this or deliveries there was always a similar period of a few hours given.

In this country some people might hide a key outside and tell the service engineer to let themselves in. There is an obvious security risk but would you consider this?

 

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Thank you Ilgon, but that would be far too great a risk. We don't have neighbours either that we could leave key with - live outside town.
Seems that the older, established type of companies like landline providers just do not change their service to keep up with customers' needs.
And then they'll wonder why they're not doing so well .................