Dealing with the OTE is a Lot Like Gambling

About being at the right place at the right time

If you sometimes read the Interkriti Forum or other, comparable sites where people who live here compare notes, ask for help, or complain about the bureaucracy, traffic or insects on the island they've consciously chosen to live on - you may get the idea that dealing with the telecom operator OTE is one of the worst nightmares that can happen to you.

Here in Western Crete, in the Apokoronas area especially, much of the OTE criticism is focused on the office in Vamos - and the three persons doing their Greek best to help you. Surely, I've had my own disappointing experiences there (waiting for weeks for an ISDN line, for months in expectations of a promised broadband (DSL) connection, but I've also seen them perform in record time (it's true, read on).

If you come into the Vamos office on a usual day, there will be the Lady Despoina to take care of you from behind her computer. She speaks all the English you'll normally need to pay your bill or to make a request, but it is clear - always - that she'd prefer that you speak Greek - and who can blame her; it's her country. Nevertheless, she's as helpful as possible - and she'll smile as long as you do.

On most days, lingering in the background, seeming reluctant to get his fingers dirty by talking to foreigners, there is also Costas. He is, so it seems, the boss of OTE Vamos (I'm not sure), and if you're truly polite enough he may stoop down to admitting that he understands FOREIGN - i.e. English - enough in order to tell you that what you want isn't readily available. And he's usually right - just as Despoina is usually right.

If there is no infrastructure for having more phone lines in Plaka or Kokkino Chorio, it's not the fault of these people. If there are no vacant slots for delivering broadband from Kalives to Kalami, it's not only not their fault but - and their faces show that clearly - it's also of no great concern to them.

If you're more lucky with your request, one of these two may refer you upstairs to see the chief engineer Giannia. He really doesn't speak much besides Greek, but if you get there you're rather close to the "Open Sesame" stage. Giannia is the guy who will - in the end - actually climb up the wooden pole near your house and who'll listen in on the line, and connect or disconnect your personal phone to the general network.

It may take a week longer than you've been promised ... he may call your at 8 in the morning one day when you're not expecting it; but hell: remember that you're on Crete. Remember why you came here (free of Gordon Blair, Angela Balkenende, George Putin and all the rest), go and enjoy the beach, have a Tsikoudia or an Ouzo at 10 AM like the wise old men of Crete do it.

But I do want to get back to the really good news. While we've waited for approximately six weeks to get our ISDN phone connected in Kefalas (2006), and about nine months to get DSL via that line, it took a mere two days (really, I'm not kidding) to get DSL broadband in the even smaller village of Megala Chorafia (meanwhile upgraded to the new name: Aptera).

In April 2007, Despoina simply said "perhaps possible after summer", and when we asked (after the summer) if there was any chance NOW - she was so adventurous as to say "We can try!" And she did try and it worked: a mere forty-eight hours later, someone from the relay station in Kalyves phoned and said - in bad but comprehensible English - "You've got DSL!"

So you see, it's really like playing roulette when you deal with the OTE. It's all about being lucky - and there is no reason at all to think that the OTE is slow or inadequate. We did neither beg nor complain nor give chocolate to anyone as a gift. Nothing like that.
You simply have to believe in your luck, believe that you'll be there with your application at just the right time.

And sometimes you're lucky to get your phone after a year, sometimes you may be so lucky to get your modem right away and the connection five months later, and - as I've experienced myself - sometimes you get a connection within two days.

All you need is luck!

PS.
Let's hope the Germans don't buy OTE/CosmOTE, because those guys from up North don't believe in luck - they only believe in efficiency. And to make that transition will be rather difficult ... and that means it will take a long time.