Here in Pristina, Kosovo, having a reliable internet connection is often times your best bet for connecting with the outside world. Checking online newspapers, your email, or using Skype . . . you need the internet to do those things.
Now, I am not expecting perfection when I purchased an internet service. This region is still developing and infrastructure is still being built. There are power outages. I am an understanding person.
It is with this backdrop that I write this blog. I was patient for over three months, but now I must vent. Perhaps it is a warning to those who just arrived in Pristina, Kosovo or maybe a wake-up call to those running artmotion to get their act together.
When I arrived in Pristina, I asked around on what the most reliable service was. Most everyone said ipko.net. (My wife uses that now . . . it IS the most reliable). Anyway, I wanted to have a wireless service without the need for a hardline cable wire. I wanted something, you know, easy. Plug and play, you know?
I turned on my mac and artmotion2, artmotion 3, artmotion, artmotionbroadband, kept popping up on my wireless checker. Hmmm . . . what is this artmotion. Perhaps I'll be able to use them and bypass the need for ipko.net. So I called the number on the website and they told me where they are located. To my good fortune, artmotion was a stone's throw away.
I went in to this little basement place and said I need some internet service. I'll be using it for skype, email, and watching youtube videos. They said, "Okay, get the 11.50 euro monthly plan." I thought to myself, that's not bad. I paid for three months.
Big mistake.
At first, things were working fine. I'd log on with the password they gave me and the service seemed to work okay. But within the first week, things stopped working the way they were supposed to. The problem was that it didn't completely not work, but instead every page you loaded would only load half way or seventy-five percent of the way. It would drive me nuts. I'd turn off the wireless airport, turn it back on, log on back to artmotion, and then it would work. A few minutes later, same thing again. A page would load only half-way or seventy-five percent of the way.
I would call. They say they would call me back. No one does. Then, an hour later, things are fixed. I say to myself, "Maybe it's just a singular incident."
My luck would not be so good. A week later, same thing starts happening. I do the same thing. This time things are fixed for 2 weeks . . . enough for me to think that everything is better. You see, I'm still a little bit wet behind the ears.
Then the same thing starts happening again.
Artmotion proclaims to have reliable wireless service. Hell, I can shoot a rubber band at their office where the service is coming from. Yet, the service is not reliable! It works on and off.
In the last few weeks, it has worked more off than on. I've used a special technique of logging off and turning on and off the airport. It takes 5 minutes to open up a page now. It's driving me crazy.
That's why I'm writing this blog. I'll keep you up to date and write everything I can about artmotion.
In the end my advice is this: pay the little extra in time and get a reliable internet service instead of this purported reliable internet service provided by artmotion.
