The Humble but Super Onion

Normal onions available in Oulu shops are between 30 and 50 gms a piece. That is the one on the right. The Super Onion which is normally sold only to the restaurants is the one on the left and each one weighs around 225 - 250 gms.









The price of onions in most shops is over € 1 per kg. The price of the super onion fluctuates seasonally. Presently it is at € 0.80 - 90 per kg.

If you want deliveries of the Super Onion (if they are available), it will be sold only to those who are ordering at least one 4.5 kg bag of the best quality Basmati (€ 1.90 per kg) or unbroken Jasmine Rice (€ 1.80 per kg) from the Rice Express.

You must inform Jacob by email at jmatthan@gmail.com or by text message at 041 7067788 latest by Thursday afternoon.

Remember when ordering to give your address and phone number so that the delivery person can ring you when he reaches your door.

Deliveries come in on Friday morning. Home delivery is late on Friday evening or on Saturday.

Annikki prefers the Super Onion not only for Indian cooking but as we eat a lot of fresh salad, she uses a whole Super Onion for a salad for 3 people!

Worst Satellite TV Service Provider

Wow! A second WORST posting in just 2 days!

It does not mean that I am in a vile mode, but I was greatly annoyed by the arrogance of the company which goes under the label - VIASAT.

We contracted a satellite input for our TV about 5 years ago and obtained a service known as VIASAT.

Over the years I have been quite disillusioned by the service this company provides. I carried on as we were only using this during the winter months. During the summer months the service is unavailable. Our antenna is in such a place that as soon as the green leaves arrive on our neighbour's garden, we lose all signal strength and reception.

Finland went Digital a few months ago. We continued to receive some Finnish channels via satellite. We paid our satellite dues to Viasat during the month of December 2007, the fee being the same as before and the package being the same as earlier years.

Before I continue further, let me put this in context via the use of a simile.

Assume you go a shop with your little daughter. She buys a bag of sweets - a tasty selection of chocolate, toffee, gum and licquorice sweets and much more. You weigh the package, see it is exactly € 10 and pay for the sweets at the Cash Counter.

As you approach the door to leave the shop, a Security Guard stops you, asks you to open the bag of sweets and then proceeds to take out many of the sweets that your daughter likes. He closes the bag and gives it back to you before allowing you to leave the shop.

What would you do?

This is exactly what VIASAT has done.

I signed up for the Silver Package which contained a selection of programmes that both Annikki and I could watch. However, on the 31st of March a range of channels was removed and from 1st April these channels are no longer even listed in the Menu!

If I paid € 201.32 for the 178 channels and then 10 channels are removed - do I sit quietly by and accept that over the next few years the company can strip me of all the channels and yet charge me the € 201,32?

When I called their Service Line, they were unable to answer under what law they acted this way. To reach an Operator on their Service Line, I had to hold on for 45 minutes, as the Operator was probably watching the channels that had been cut off from my package!

The Operator asked me to address my complaint to their email address: info@viasat.fi

I told the Operator that I was not going to do that as the last time I sent a complaint to them, it was in December 2007 and to this day there has not even been an acknowledgement of my complaint.

I demanded to speak to a person.

I was told the boss was one Petri Linnankivi whose phone number was 09 - 251 30111.

I rang the number and found it was their telephone exchange. The Operator refused to put me through to this gentleman, stating he was away in Viro. I was told that he would be back in 2 days.

On the day that he was back I rang but was informed that he was on another telephone line. I said I would wait online for him. The Operator would have none of it.

I gave my name and phone number and asked her to get him to call me back!!

Guess what, 5 days later I am still waiting for his call!!!!!

What would you like to call this sort of service - Extortion and Fraud by the Worst Satellite TV Service provider?

That is exactly what I would call it.

Worst Internet Service Provider - DNA

(Posted on Jacob's Blog and the Oulu Best Buy Blog.)

It is rarely that I post a Worst Buy Report but this is one which certainly deserves mention.

In November 2007 I informed DNA, my phone and Internet Service Provider (ISP) that there was something seriously wrong with my fixed phone line as it appeared that someone else was using it. There would be a regular tinkle many times a day, as if someone was putting the phone down.

DNA did not even register this complaint. This problem continued till, finally, on the 21st of February 2008, my fixed IP (full rate) internet connection stopped working.

I immediately contacted the Help Desk (0600 39 6900) and spoke with one of the Operators on duty. He tried to fix the connection but failed.

I was asked to take the Cisco ADSL Modem provided by Oulu Telephone Company (Oulun Puhelin OY) and have it tested at the DNA Shop on Torikatu.

They tested it and gave me a replacement, a Siemens Speedstream 4100.

I hooked this up and found the same problems persisted in that I could see I was online but was unable to reach the internet.

On Monday 25th 2008 I spoke with a Help Desk Pperator, Mr. Miikka Parikka. He went through various procedures with me and finally decided that he would have to tell the Service Engineers to take a look at the line as he was unable to resolve the issue.

Despite my protestations that from 2001 onwards I had been using the DHCP protocol to connect to the internet, Mr. Parikka insisted that I use the PPPoE. No doubt we always arrived at the same result as we had over the previous 7 years, “PPPoE Server not found”.

All the time since 2001 I have been using DHCP as I have had a fixed IP number. I reported that what was happening was that when I used the DHCP protocol I was being assigned a dynamic IP, and even with that the internet connection was not working.

I spoke to Help Desk Operators every single day that week, each time a different one, and each time they said they would call back.

Not one of them ever bothered to call back.

Then came the first shock when I spoke the Help Desk to a operator named Ms. Leena Nissonen on 3rd March 2008. She revealed to me that no work request had even been sent to the Service Department by any of the operators that I had talked to during the previous 10 days. This included Miikka Parikka, Jarkko Koivunen, Petri Savonen, Petri Salonen, Jari Anttila, Tuominen, Tony Munto and Jari Tuovinen.


This showed the callaous and irresponsible behaviour among those who man the Help Desk at DNA.

Leena Nissonen gave me a different phone number to contact, 0800 500 5000, which was the direct line to the Service Department to verify that they were doing the job.

I dialed the next day to find out what was happening. The lady operator who took the call said the work order had just been received and they were designating THEIR service engineer to look at the line.

I asked for this lady’s name, but she refused to give it to me.

For the next week I rang this number daily and they said that THEIR service engineer was on the job and they would call me back.

They never did call back - not even once.

Finally, on Monday 10th March 2008 I received a call from a service engineer I knew. He had handled a similar incident in 2003.

“Eric” told me he had been testing the line and he had found several major errors. After a few hours he rang me to tell me that he had found numerous problems with the line and he had corrected them. He suggested that I should try the connection when I got back to my computer.

When I tried the computer, however, I found that exactly the same problems continued. There had been no improvement.

So it was back to the Help Desk and several attempts to get the computer connected to the internet.

In the process I was referred to the Customer Service Section at the phone number 0800 300 400 where my original my user id and the password were changed as they thought that could have been the problem.

Even with this there was still no internet!

Again it was referred to the Service Group.

On Thursday 20th March, I spoke with a lady who said she would handle the matter before the Easter weekend and call me back. When nothing happened all day, I called again and spoke with the same lady who said she was on the job and she would call me back!

No call materialized, so again the entire Easter weekend I was without the internet connection.


On the Tuesday, when they were back at work after the long Easter recess, I got to the Service Group again. The guy who answered got a bit of an earful from me, especially as he refused to give his name. I really let fly accusing the Service Department of hiding behind anonymity because they were just an inefficient bunch of guys who did no work to solve anyone problems.

That really hit the mark as “Eric” turned up with his computer and tried the internet connection with HIS laptop to find the connection just was not working.

So Eric went back to the switch-box. He located the major problem (in the Gateway) and finally got the internet working, but...

The connection worked only using PPPoE. The IP was not static, which is what I have contracted for. It was a dynamically generated IP. Also the speed of the connection was not what I had contracted for but a measly 400 kbps. on download and about 160 kbps for upload. My contract is for the full rate ADSL connection which I was told is 8 Mbps and 1 Mbps, respectively. I was getting 1 / 5th to 1 / 20th of what I was paying for.

In the month of February I had to revert to my internal modem (56 kbps) and an alternate telephone line which cost me an additional € 55 to keep the internet for just 10 days for my essential work! In March I bought a wireless modem from Elisa at a cost of € 199 and with that and my 56 kbps internal modem I have been able to keep my essential work alive. (I have not yet received the bill for my modem access for the month of March!)

It is interesting that Eric is not an employee of DNA but of ELTEL, which DNA uses to rectify problems online.

In short, the DNA organisation could do nothing for the last one and a half months to rectify any problem as they have no one who is competent to handle this problem and they depend on an outsourced service too fix problems.


There have been letters to the Editor in the local newspaper giving more incidents like mine.

Finally, I got the internet connection working, not as a DHCP connection but only as a PPPoE service and with that I have been unable to use my router with which all my computers could access the internet.

I used several services to check my internet speed and it remained low, but also surprisingly the IP address was not my Fixed IP but a dynamically accessed one.

When I contacted the Help Desk they could give me no answer but asked me to contact Customer Service. When I contacted them I found they had given me the new user ID and password but failed to transfer this to my Fixed IP!

At long last they did that and using PPPoE I was then able to access the internet but only at the slow speed.

It should be noted that EVERY TIME I spoke to the Help Desk I had told them to inform the Billing Section of this problem. I even physically visited the DNA Bills Section and lodged my complaint, whereupon a guy there asked me to make my complaint online, which I had promptly done!

Then on 1st April 2008 (almost a mointh and a half since the problem originated) I got this email from one Ms. Aspa Pohjoinen as follows:

from "aspa.pohjoinen@dnaoy.fi"
to jmatthan@gmail.com
date 1 Apr 2008 16:29
subject internetconnection

Hyvä asiakkaamme.

Ohessa linkki, jolla tähän palautteeseen voi vastata. Älä käytä sähköpostin vastaa-painiketta,
sillä se ei ohjaa vastaustasi perille.

https://palaute.opoy.fi/r?aw=2008-03-14_16X07X37.511201&p=13QP01c

Vastaus palautteeseenne

Thank You for Your feedback. Yesterday You phoned and I repaired Your dynamic ip username.

There have been some troubles at the gate during the time 19.3 to 25.3. Installing man has
repaired it at the 25th of March.

We give You 50% back of Your monthly broadbands fee (24,50€) on Your next fee, which You will get
on April.

Ystävällisin terveisin,

Asiakaspalvelu

DNA Palvelut / Pohjois-Suomi
Arkistokatu 4, PL 30
FIN-90101 OULU
p. 0800 300400

http://www.dnaoy.fi

The fact that my internet connection was DEAD for over a month and a half was most conveniently ignored.


This blog entry is to show you without doubt that the worst Internet Service Provider in Finland must certainly be DNA. They have no competent persons in any department, they hide behind a screen of anonymity and when it comes to servicing the faulty line they do not even have their own service engineers but depend on outsourced persons!