Well, here we go again. More vodafone problems. Now the problem is with their web page.
I decided to login to the web page today to see what the options you get with pre-pay are. So, assuming that after I'd cancelled my last account that they'd deleted my web account as well, I tried to set up a new one. Hmm, nope, got told This number is already registered. Have your password resent by clicking on the 'forgot your password' link below ". Did this and got sent the same passwd that I had before. Ok, no probs so far, I'll just login as before. Ah, this is Vodafone tho, that'd be easy! Every time I try, I get
There was a problem with your account, please contact Customer care (SRV-WL-03).
Well, I don't really have the strength nor patience at this stage to ring up their helldesk, so I decide to just email them. So, I go to the "help & support" page, is no option in the FAQ for "my account won't let me login". Right, ok, so I'll go to the "contact us" page. there's a link there for "email us" under the pre-pay section. Where does it take me? To the fucking login page! if I could login, I wouldn't have to report a bloody error would I?
These guys are really pissing me off. I'm going to have to take several dozen deep breaths here before I try the cust service number (which I now know off by heart). Is no point in reefing some poor sales drone out of it because the rocket scientists in charge of the back-end can't get their shit together.... :-(
Monday, May 25, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
New Phone
Well, I've had the new phone up & running & working about a week now, so I might as well give my impressions of it, seeing as it took so much fucking hassle to get it!
Well, first bit I suppose is the touch screen. I've used the iPhone a bit before, and while it's maybe not quite as intuitive as that beastie, it's still pretty good. The icons are pretty big & easy to click, the fonts are pretty legible, you can flick the screen to scroll (and of you don't like that, the volume keys also let you scroll thru menus), and the screen is pretty legible even in bright(ish) light. Well, ok, we haven't had any scorching hot bright days, but it's been a bit sunny and I had no problems seeing the screen. this is apparenly an improvement on previous Samsungs - one of my friends had the Omnia and got rid of it 'cos the screen was terrible. The UI has a sidebar which you can put some of your most commonly used widgets/apps on for easy access, and then to make things even easier, you can drag the widgets to the "desktop" for even easier access. So, at the moment I'm one click away from writing a new message or reading my txts. One niggle with this is that you can't just put anything on the sidebar, just a limited subset that samsung seem to have decided you'll use the most. Is still handy tho.
One of the reasons I got the phone was the camera - is an 8 megapixel, so is 2Mp higher than my sony cybershot! Megapixel count tho is only really a way for camera makers to practice biggerdickism with their devices: at 8Mp I can print photo quality up to an A1 page, how many times am I going to do that? The picture quality is pretty good, about as good as you're going to see on a phone - the only better one may be the Sony Ericsson C905, but I didn't really like the look & feel of that one. I haven't done a huge amount of pic shooting yet but what I have done is pretty decent. The phone doesn't come with wi-fi but I figured I used the wi-fi maybe 2 dozen times tops on my last phone in the year and a bit I had it, so no great loss. the music player is decent enough, and plays most formats, and has a dolby-like option which reall puts a bit of "whoomph!" into your songs - I want to try this out with my Sennheuser headphones! The radio is pretty good too, and has a rather unusual feature that allows you to record off it, altho I haven't tried that yet. The video player on it is able to play DivX movies, I tried it and it works pretty well, and the sound quality is excellent too. Only problem tho is that all bar one of my movie collection on my laptop are XVid-encoded not DivX! The phone ships with the ususal other crap, alarm clock, calendar, calculator etc, and all are adequate enough, and for some reason they are selling it as a "gael fon", so it has an irish-english dictionary built in. Eh? :-P
And now onto the niggly little bits. One of the big selling points of the phone was apparenly that it has built-in GPS, but that's just a gimmick. All the reviews I read of the phone said that there were some built-in apps that took advantage of it, but it seems Vodafone in their wisdom took all them out on their version, so the only thing that uses it is the camera for geo-tagging pictures. I tried installing google maps, but even that seems to use base station triangulation rather than the GPS to find out where you are. In the phone settings you can get the GPS to get your location but it's fairly flakey, about 3 times in 4 it fails to find the satellites. So, if you're looking for a phone that has working & useful GPS system, don't get this one.
This is also the only touch-screen phone on the market that has an actual keypad as well, which slides out at the bottom of the screen. it seems tho that Samsung have fallen into the trap of all mobile phone manufacturers and put all the function keys wherever they want rather than in a commonly agreed place - space is on the # key, caps is on the *, punctuation marks/symbols are on the 1 which is normal enough, but t9 options are on the 0. The layout of the keypad means as well that the keys are out to the very edge of the phone, so if you're one-hand texting with your thumb, the space key is uncomfortably close to the base of your thumb, you're nearly stretching your thumb back to get to it. So, most of the time I just use the on-screen touch keypad not the physical one. Also, there's no actual delete key or any direction keys - delete is a soft-key on the touch-screen and to change the cursor position you tap on the screen where you want to go. You also can't select a word you already wrote to change the spelling, you have to delete the word and start again. so, if you type "he" and you wanted "if" instead, you can't just select it and use '0' to change the spelling, you have to delete it and go again. Having said that, the touch-screen typing is pretty fast, faster than I'd manage on my old phone - so long as you don't make a typo and have to go back and change spelling, for the reason I mentioned a sec ago. Also, the T9 dictionary is a bit flakey, it comes up with some "interesting" spelling options. One nice thing tho (which I just discovered today) is it autocompletes punctuation, so to type "can't" you just type "cant". This all just needs a bit of practise I guess, and the phone has at least passed the "drunk test": I was out for a few pints last nigth and was able to text easily enough about 5-6 pints into the evening! :-P
And now onto making calls: The phonebook only holds one number per entry, which is a bit awkward for ppl with multiple numbers, and for some reason when you make a call from teh phone book and hang up, you're left back at the phone book entry rather than at the "desktop" like on pretty much any other phone, so you ahve to exit out of it to get back. Also, there seems to be a lot of "spillage" of sound out of the earphone, when you're on a call you can turn the phone around backwards and nearly hear the other person as well as you could the right way around! There's great sound out of the headphones in a call, and if you don't like the Smasung headphones there's a normal headphone jack on the speaker part where you can plug in your own - the connection to the phone itself tho is a Samsung proprietary one which also doubles as the power port. It has a cover over it but instead of a sliding cover it swivels around and sort of sticks out when you ahve the 'phones plugged in, I can't see it lasting a huge amount of time without being smapped off.
All in all I guess, it's a pretty nice phone, worth the money I eventually paid for it (altho a little less vodafone-related hassle wud have been nice), but there are a few arez it does fall down on a little - apart from the GPS it sort of has the feel that as well as skimping on wi-fi, Samsung went to make a great multimedia camera device, and forgot to put very much effort into the actual "phone" features of the device like calls & txts....
Well, first bit I suppose is the touch screen. I've used the iPhone a bit before, and while it's maybe not quite as intuitive as that beastie, it's still pretty good. The icons are pretty big & easy to click, the fonts are pretty legible, you can flick the screen to scroll (and of you don't like that, the volume keys also let you scroll thru menus), and the screen is pretty legible even in bright(ish) light. Well, ok, we haven't had any scorching hot bright days, but it's been a bit sunny and I had no problems seeing the screen. this is apparenly an improvement on previous Samsungs - one of my friends had the Omnia and got rid of it 'cos the screen was terrible. The UI has a sidebar which you can put some of your most commonly used widgets/apps on for easy access, and then to make things even easier, you can drag the widgets to the "desktop" for even easier access. So, at the moment I'm one click away from writing a new message or reading my txts. One niggle with this is that you can't just put anything on the sidebar, just a limited subset that samsung seem to have decided you'll use the most. Is still handy tho.
One of the reasons I got the phone was the camera - is an 8 megapixel, so is 2Mp higher than my sony cybershot! Megapixel count tho is only really a way for camera makers to practice biggerdickism with their devices: at 8Mp I can print photo quality up to an A1 page, how many times am I going to do that? The picture quality is pretty good, about as good as you're going to see on a phone - the only better one may be the Sony Ericsson C905, but I didn't really like the look & feel of that one. I haven't done a huge amount of pic shooting yet but what I have done is pretty decent. The phone doesn't come with wi-fi but I figured I used the wi-fi maybe 2 dozen times tops on my last phone in the year and a bit I had it, so no great loss. the music player is decent enough, and plays most formats, and has a dolby-like option which reall puts a bit of "whoomph!" into your songs - I want to try this out with my Sennheuser headphones! The radio is pretty good too, and has a rather unusual feature that allows you to record off it, altho I haven't tried that yet. The video player on it is able to play DivX movies, I tried it and it works pretty well, and the sound quality is excellent too. Only problem tho is that all bar one of my movie collection on my laptop are XVid-encoded not DivX! The phone ships with the ususal other crap, alarm clock, calendar, calculator etc, and all are adequate enough, and for some reason they are selling it as a "gael fon", so it has an irish-english dictionary built in. Eh? :-P
And now onto the niggly little bits. One of the big selling points of the phone was apparenly that it has built-in GPS, but that's just a gimmick. All the reviews I read of the phone said that there were some built-in apps that took advantage of it, but it seems Vodafone in their wisdom took all them out on their version, so the only thing that uses it is the camera for geo-tagging pictures. I tried installing google maps, but even that seems to use base station triangulation rather than the GPS to find out where you are. In the phone settings you can get the GPS to get your location but it's fairly flakey, about 3 times in 4 it fails to find the satellites. So, if you're looking for a phone that has working & useful GPS system, don't get this one.
This is also the only touch-screen phone on the market that has an actual keypad as well, which slides out at the bottom of the screen. it seems tho that Samsung have fallen into the trap of all mobile phone manufacturers and put all the function keys wherever they want rather than in a commonly agreed place - space is on the # key, caps is on the *, punctuation marks/symbols are on the 1 which is normal enough, but t9 options are on the 0. The layout of the keypad means as well that the keys are out to the very edge of the phone, so if you're one-hand texting with your thumb, the space key is uncomfortably close to the base of your thumb, you're nearly stretching your thumb back to get to it. So, most of the time I just use the on-screen touch keypad not the physical one. Also, there's no actual delete key or any direction keys - delete is a soft-key on the touch-screen and to change the cursor position you tap on the screen where you want to go. You also can't select a word you already wrote to change the spelling, you have to delete the word and start again. so, if you type "he" and you wanted "if" instead, you can't just select it and use '0' to change the spelling, you have to delete it and go again. Having said that, the touch-screen typing is pretty fast, faster than I'd manage on my old phone - so long as you don't make a typo and have to go back and change spelling, for the reason I mentioned a sec ago. Also, the T9 dictionary is a bit flakey, it comes up with some "interesting" spelling options. One nice thing tho (which I just discovered today) is it autocompletes punctuation, so to type "can't" you just type "cant". This all just needs a bit of practise I guess, and the phone has at least passed the "drunk test": I was out for a few pints last nigth and was able to text easily enough about 5-6 pints into the evening! :-P
And now onto making calls: The phonebook only holds one number per entry, which is a bit awkward for ppl with multiple numbers, and for some reason when you make a call from teh phone book and hang up, you're left back at the phone book entry rather than at the "desktop" like on pretty much any other phone, so you ahve to exit out of it to get back. Also, there seems to be a lot of "spillage" of sound out of the earphone, when you're on a call you can turn the phone around backwards and nearly hear the other person as well as you could the right way around! There's great sound out of the headphones in a call, and if you don't like the Smasung headphones there's a normal headphone jack on the speaker part where you can plug in your own - the connection to the phone itself tho is a Samsung proprietary one which also doubles as the power port. It has a cover over it but instead of a sliding cover it swivels around and sort of sticks out when you ahve the 'phones plugged in, I can't see it lasting a huge amount of time without being smapped off.
All in all I guess, it's a pretty nice phone, worth the money I eventually paid for it (altho a little less vodafone-related hassle wud have been nice), but there are a few arez it does fall down on a little - apart from the GPS it sort of has the feel that as well as skimping on wi-fi, Samsung went to make a great multimedia camera device, and forgot to put very much effort into the actual "phone" features of the device like calls & txts....
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Dirty windows
Am not totally sure what got into me this evening, but I decided to clean the windows on the door leading out to the balcony on our flat - is a good while since they were done and I thought they looked a little bit mucky. A little bit!
I did one window first and the difference between that and the one I hadn't done was pretty gruesomely obvious.
Guess which one is the clean one eh? here's a closer look out through them, that last shot isn't the best:
And now the view from the outside looking in:
I'd sort of forgotten that you should be able to see a reflection in a window!
This is what you get when you live over a busy city center street. I can't remember how long it is since they were done, but the amount of shit that came off them, especially when I wiped down the frame! :-(
Well, maybe next time I won't leave it as long. Only problem now is, the other flat windows, the one where there's no convenient balcony to stand on when I'm cleaning them, look really awful......
I did one window first and the difference between that and the one I hadn't done was pretty gruesomely obvious.
Guess which one is the clean one eh? here's a closer look out through them, that last shot isn't the best:
And now the view from the outside looking in:
I'd sort of forgotten that you should be able to see a reflection in a window!
This is what you get when you live over a busy city center street. I can't remember how long it is since they were done, but the amount of shit that came off them, especially when I wiped down the frame! :-(
Well, maybe next time I won't leave it as long. Only problem now is, the other flat windows, the one where there's no convenient balcony to stand on when I'm cleaning them, look really awful......
Monday, May 18, 2009
The Phone Saga - over at last!
So, last time I left this little problem was last thurs night, when O2 had pretty much turned around and said "well, sucks to be you, we'll maybe call O2 and ask them pretty please to give us the number". Friday morning, I decided to try ringing them again to see was there any more progress. Despite the fact that the previous day, the last person I'd asked said they'd get onto O2 again to release the number, the helldesk person I got this time pretty much told me the same thing the dude had told me the day before, they'd tried 3 times and failed, and someone was going to contact o2. I asked him exactly what I could do here, and he suggested I try to put in the number change as a new request again, seeing as o2 were after blocking the same request ID 3 times in a row, tehy were harly likely to let it though again.
Ok, no problem, I decided to try that. Asked the guy would it help if I rang O2 and got them to release the number, and he told me I wouldn't have to do that. So, I went into the vodafone shop on fri to sign up again. Slight problem: I forgot that for a pay monthly account I needed ID and a bill. Well, there goes that plan. So, I decided to wait until monday to get it done again, as even if I signed up online I'd still have to wait to get the SIM in the post. On Sunday, just to be sure, I rang up O2 and asked them to release the number., What was I told? "Well, your number is a pre-pay one so there shouldn't be any problems with porting it over to Vodafone, should happen straight away". Eh? Isn't what Vodafone were telling me!
I finally got to go into a vodafone shop at lunchtime today. Went up to the counter, said "I'd like to set up a pre-pay account thanks, I want to port this number over from o2". The reply? "certainly sir, what's the number?" and that was it. Number was working before I got half-way back to the office with my sandwich! This begs the question, what the fuck were those muppets who were giving me the run-around on weds and fri trying to do with the bloody number? Then again, is maybe not surprising that they'd fuck something up, given the fact that the helldesk guy I was talking to on fri wasn't aware that the 1800 number had been having "technical problems" that meant you couldn't get through to a human on it for 3 days - "oh right, thanks, I'll pass it on"!
So, the phone is working now, all I have to do is get used to using a touch-screen - pretty much means you can't just txt with one hand now, as it's too awkward using the touch-screen one-handed. Also, I decided to switch to pre-pay instead of bill-pay - if you top up by €20 a month you get free calls & txts to other vodafone numbers and with bill-pay you're paying €19.95 for 50 free txts and calls a month that don't roll over from one month to the next, so for the same price as your contract on bill-pay you get more free stuff, plus you still get to spend the €20 on calls. Besides, I've seen how well they reward their loyal bill-pay customers......
Well, we'd better hope for all our sakes now that there isn't anything wrong with my phone in the next few weeks, 'cos if there is I'll probably be going into the Vodafone shop with a trenchcoat and a shotgun!
Ok, no problem, I decided to try that. Asked the guy would it help if I rang O2 and got them to release the number, and he told me I wouldn't have to do that. So, I went into the vodafone shop on fri to sign up again. Slight problem: I forgot that for a pay monthly account I needed ID and a bill. Well, there goes that plan. So, I decided to wait until monday to get it done again, as even if I signed up online I'd still have to wait to get the SIM in the post. On Sunday, just to be sure, I rang up O2 and asked them to release the number., What was I told? "Well, your number is a pre-pay one so there shouldn't be any problems with porting it over to Vodafone, should happen straight away". Eh? Isn't what Vodafone were telling me!
I finally got to go into a vodafone shop at lunchtime today. Went up to the counter, said "I'd like to set up a pre-pay account thanks, I want to port this number over from o2". The reply? "certainly sir, what's the number?" and that was it. Number was working before I got half-way back to the office with my sandwich! This begs the question, what the fuck were those muppets who were giving me the run-around on weds and fri trying to do with the bloody number? Then again, is maybe not surprising that they'd fuck something up, given the fact that the helldesk guy I was talking to on fri wasn't aware that the 1800 number had been having "technical problems" that meant you couldn't get through to a human on it for 3 days - "oh right, thanks, I'll pass it on"!
So, the phone is working now, all I have to do is get used to using a touch-screen - pretty much means you can't just txt with one hand now, as it's too awkward using the touch-screen one-handed. Also, I decided to switch to pre-pay instead of bill-pay - if you top up by €20 a month you get free calls & txts to other vodafone numbers and with bill-pay you're paying €19.95 for 50 free txts and calls a month that don't roll over from one month to the next, so for the same price as your contract on bill-pay you get more free stuff, plus you still get to spend the €20 on calls. Besides, I've seen how well they reward their loyal bill-pay customers......
Well, we'd better hope for all our sakes now that there isn't anything wrong with my phone in the next few weeks, 'cos if there is I'll probably be going into the Vodafone shop with a trenchcoat and a shotgun!
Class Reunion
Well, I'm now definitely officially old. I'm just after having my 10-year college reunion. 10 years, Jesus. Where did the time go?
Was a fairly good event, as these things go. Met up with Eamonn in Town for lunch, then headed out to the college a bit early so we could take a look around. The atrium and the canteen pretty much looked the same as it did when we were there, but after that, it looked like a totally different place. when we were there, there were 2 buildings in the college, plus the gym & the Dome (the campus bar) Now there are 6. And even of the two we had, one was unrecognizable. What used to be the library is now more lecture rooms, and the D corridor is now admin offices for the school of business rather than the computer rooms we used to spend our time in. We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves wandering around, as it was the last day of the exams and the place was deserted.
The official reunion itself started at 4 with a drinks reception in the Tourism & Leisure building, which now occupies what used to be a football pitch in my time. Me & Eamonn were one of the first in there, so we settled in with a drink and watched ppl come in. Apparently there were a lot of reunions on, for 10, 15, 25 and 30 year classes (obviously the 20-year ppl never bothered replying), so there were maybe 200 there in total. Out of our graduating class of about 80 tho, there were only 6 that turned up, including myself.
Once everyone was in and settled with at least a few drinks under our belts, there was a small bit of speechifying, followed by a quick tour of a few of the new bits of the college (which I'd seen already). Our "tour guide" was Paul Barry, who used to be head of our department but was now something big in the applied mathematics dept. After the tour, we had a surprisingly decent meal in the Gallery restaurant, one of the new bits of the college. Place is a far cry from the canteen we used to have to put up with - even had a pizza/pasta counter and a smoothie bar! After the meal, we all repaired over to The Dome, which was also twice the size it used to be (which was disappointing, it didn't feel like the place we were so used to). After a few pints in there, it ws into town to Geoffs, which we'd figured out was the only bar we used to go to that wasn't either renamed, remodeled, under new management or (in the case of 2 places) had been totally razed to the ground and rebuilt! So, we stayed there for a few more pints and went our separate ways again around 1am.
It was a good day, but was a bit depressing in ways It was good to be able to wander around the college and recall stuff like "remember when mick duggan brought the pint of guinness into the computer room during rag week?", but it was a bit of a shock to the system to see how much the place had changed. Also, the turn-out was a bit disappointing, 6 pl out of 80? I knew when I'd signed up for it back in early april that there weren't many going, and I know everyone has their own lives to lead and all, and that some ppl were living too far away to be able to make it, but still, a 10 year anniversary isn't something that crops up every day, and I know of at least 5-6 people from the class that are still around waterford that could probably easily have made it. Also, the people that did turn, up, with the exception of Eamonn, weren't really people I would have hung out with much in college, they were in different classes to me in 1st & 2nd year and most had done the commercial stream rather than the industrial stream when the classes split in 3rd year. I'm not saying that we didn't get on, but there were ppl I would have seen a lot more of in college that didn't come.
Well, at least it wasn't a secondary school reunion - altho if we have those, it'll be 15 years next year. The only reason I'd go to one of those would be to see how many of the fuckers I went to school with have ended up stuck on the family farm, in prison or as single parents on the dole. I could count the no of ppl from my Leaving Cert class that I wouldn't mind seeing again on the fingers of one hand, just about.
(update)
I was tidying out my press there today as well, and I found this tucked inside an old college prospectus....
Damn, that brings back memories! Am not sure what happened my face tho....
Was a fairly good event, as these things go. Met up with Eamonn in Town for lunch, then headed out to the college a bit early so we could take a look around. The atrium and the canteen pretty much looked the same as it did when we were there, but after that, it looked like a totally different place. when we were there, there were 2 buildings in the college, plus the gym & the Dome (the campus bar) Now there are 6. And even of the two we had, one was unrecognizable. What used to be the library is now more lecture rooms, and the D corridor is now admin offices for the school of business rather than the computer rooms we used to spend our time in. We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves wandering around, as it was the last day of the exams and the place was deserted.
The official reunion itself started at 4 with a drinks reception in the Tourism & Leisure building, which now occupies what used to be a football pitch in my time. Me & Eamonn were one of the first in there, so we settled in with a drink and watched ppl come in. Apparently there were a lot of reunions on, for 10, 15, 25 and 30 year classes (obviously the 20-year ppl never bothered replying), so there were maybe 200 there in total. Out of our graduating class of about 80 tho, there were only 6 that turned up, including myself.
Once everyone was in and settled with at least a few drinks under our belts, there was a small bit of speechifying, followed by a quick tour of a few of the new bits of the college (which I'd seen already). Our "tour guide" was Paul Barry, who used to be head of our department but was now something big in the applied mathematics dept. After the tour, we had a surprisingly decent meal in the Gallery restaurant, one of the new bits of the college. Place is a far cry from the canteen we used to have to put up with - even had a pizza/pasta counter and a smoothie bar! After the meal, we all repaired over to The Dome, which was also twice the size it used to be (which was disappointing, it didn't feel like the place we were so used to). After a few pints in there, it ws into town to Geoffs, which we'd figured out was the only bar we used to go to that wasn't either renamed, remodeled, under new management or (in the case of 2 places) had been totally razed to the ground and rebuilt! So, we stayed there for a few more pints and went our separate ways again around 1am.
It was a good day, but was a bit depressing in ways It was good to be able to wander around the college and recall stuff like "remember when mick duggan brought the pint of guinness into the computer room during rag week?", but it was a bit of a shock to the system to see how much the place had changed. Also, the turn-out was a bit disappointing, 6 pl out of 80? I knew when I'd signed up for it back in early april that there weren't many going, and I know everyone has their own lives to lead and all, and that some ppl were living too far away to be able to make it, but still, a 10 year anniversary isn't something that crops up every day, and I know of at least 5-6 people from the class that are still around waterford that could probably easily have made it. Also, the people that did turn, up, with the exception of Eamonn, weren't really people I would have hung out with much in college, they were in different classes to me in 1st & 2nd year and most had done the commercial stream rather than the industrial stream when the classes split in 3rd year. I'm not saying that we didn't get on, but there were ppl I would have seen a lot more of in college that didn't come.
Well, at least it wasn't a secondary school reunion - altho if we have those, it'll be 15 years next year. The only reason I'd go to one of those would be to see how many of the fuckers I went to school with have ended up stuck on the family farm, in prison or as single parents on the dole. I could count the no of ppl from my Leaving Cert class that I wouldn't mind seeing again on the fingers of one hand, just about.
(update)
I was tidying out my press there today as well, and I found this tucked inside an old college prospectus....
Damn, that brings back memories! Am not sure what happened my face tho....
Thursday, May 14, 2009
New Phone
Well, I have my new phone at last. There's only one problem with it: I can't actually use it. :-(
I finally figured outhow to get around the Vodafone problem of getting a new phone without paying full price and still keep my same number. Seems that while I couldn't go from one account to another on Vodafone and keep my number, I could switch to o2 and keep my number - and then switch back. So, that's what I did, mostly.
So, I rang up vodafone and told them I was leaving to go to O2, and could they cancel my account. Guy on the other end of the phone told me it'd take maybe 2 days to port my number over to O2, but I decided to try it anyway. So, at lunchtime that day, I headed up to grafton st, went onto the 2 shop and asked them could I get as pre-pay account and keep my vodafone number on which I'd just cancelled the account. I told the sales dude waht Vodafone had said about how long it'd take and, he laughed and said that they always said that and it'd be a lot quicker. Sure enough, after I left the shop I decided to drop into the Bagel Bar on Dawson St to grab lunch to bring back, and before I'd even gotten my bagel, beep beep on my phone, "welcome to O2". Easy peasy!
So, I had just bought a O2 pre-pay SIM for €10, and had €10 credit on it, all I had to do was wait til my last vodafone bill cleared and I used up my free tenner's o2 credit, and back I go. THe Vodafone bill duly arrived, so I decided to get my new phone. And this is where Vodafone started to spanners into the works of what was up until then a prefectly simple plan. I ordered the phone online on monday, the new Samsung Tocco Ultra, touch-screen, 8Mp camera, GPS, real fancy like, plus free bluetooth headset, for €99. THen the trouble started. While I could have the phone by tuesday, the web page wouldn't let me swap the numbers over until weds at the earliest. Fair 'nuff, I thought, I have enough credit left til then (I actually got an extra €2.50 off O2 for registering online), so I chose to have the number ported over between 8am and 10am. The order went though, but in the email confirmation I was warned that "We'll strive to switch you to Vodafone at your preferred tine, but on the rare occasions when this is not possible we'll ussually complete the switching process later on your preferred day.". Ok, fair enough.
The new phone arrived early on tuesday afternoon, all shiny and new, so I was all eager to get it up and running and playing with it. Slight snag tho: no signal on my new Vodafone SIM, and the phone is SIM-locked so I can't use my o2 on in it! So, while I could play with it and get used to the menu system, using a touch-screen phone etc, I couldn't actually use it. Is a nice little entertainment system, has a decent enough music player & radio, camera is pretty good as well, but it isn't actually a phone yet. That had to wait until I'm not an O2 member any more.
So, yesterday morning 8am arrived, so any time now I should be back on vodafone. Problem tho: no "beep beep, welcome to vodafone". 10am arrived, still no port out. I decided to ring them at around 3pm, to see was I one of the "rare occasions" and when could I expect it to be done. First thing, to get support on the Vodafone helpline, you have to enter your vodafone number. Oops, didn't really have one yet. Got though to a human after having to wade though several menu options and listen to several "We are pleased to announce vodafone have brought out several new offers X, Y and Z, which you won't have any choice but to hear us talk about, your call may be recorded if you ever get through, but your call is still important to us" messages, I got a human. So, I explained that I was still waiting to be welcomed into the Vodafone fold, and got put on hold a few times while she figured it out. Apparenly Voda had tried to get the number off O2 but o2 had refused to release it as I had only been a customer a short while. Instead of letting me know, Voda had decided to sit on it and do no more about it for a while! I told them to tell O2 I was a genuine port out, and she promised someone would get back to me soon.
That was around 3pm on weds, it's now about 11pm on thurs night and no word. I tried to get through earlier but depending at what stage in the menus I got to, I was told either "All our operators are busy" or "we are experiencing technical difficulties, please call again later". So, I now have 2 useless phones as I'm at my parents house and there's fuck-all signal for anyone except vodafone here, and besides, I'm down to about 20c O2 credit as I was expecting to be swapped over by now and I don't want to buy more as I could be transferred over at any time (yeah, right). So, am going to have to make some rather unfriendly phone calls tomorrow (from a land-line) to get this sorted.
I finally figured outhow to get around the Vodafone problem of getting a new phone without paying full price and still keep my same number. Seems that while I couldn't go from one account to another on Vodafone and keep my number, I could switch to o2 and keep my number - and then switch back. So, that's what I did, mostly.
So, I rang up vodafone and told them I was leaving to go to O2, and could they cancel my account. Guy on the other end of the phone told me it'd take maybe 2 days to port my number over to O2, but I decided to try it anyway. So, at lunchtime that day, I headed up to grafton st, went onto the 2 shop and asked them could I get as pre-pay account and keep my vodafone number on which I'd just cancelled the account. I told the sales dude waht Vodafone had said about how long it'd take and, he laughed and said that they always said that and it'd be a lot quicker. Sure enough, after I left the shop I decided to drop into the Bagel Bar on Dawson St to grab lunch to bring back, and before I'd even gotten my bagel, beep beep on my phone, "welcome to O2". Easy peasy!
So, I had just bought a O2 pre-pay SIM for €10, and had €10 credit on it, all I had to do was wait til my last vodafone bill cleared and I used up my free tenner's o2 credit, and back I go. THe Vodafone bill duly arrived, so I decided to get my new phone. And this is where Vodafone started to spanners into the works of what was up until then a prefectly simple plan. I ordered the phone online on monday, the new Samsung Tocco Ultra, touch-screen, 8Mp camera, GPS, real fancy like, plus free bluetooth headset, for €99. THen the trouble started. While I could have the phone by tuesday, the web page wouldn't let me swap the numbers over until weds at the earliest. Fair 'nuff, I thought, I have enough credit left til then (I actually got an extra €2.50 off O2 for registering online), so I chose to have the number ported over between 8am and 10am. The order went though, but in the email confirmation I was warned that "We'll strive to switch you to Vodafone at your preferred tine, but on the rare occasions when this is not possible we'll ussually complete the switching process later on your preferred day.". Ok, fair enough.
The new phone arrived early on tuesday afternoon, all shiny and new, so I was all eager to get it up and running and playing with it. Slight snag tho: no signal on my new Vodafone SIM, and the phone is SIM-locked so I can't use my o2 on in it! So, while I could play with it and get used to the menu system, using a touch-screen phone etc, I couldn't actually use it. Is a nice little entertainment system, has a decent enough music player & radio, camera is pretty good as well, but it isn't actually a phone yet. That had to wait until I'm not an O2 member any more.
So, yesterday morning 8am arrived, so any time now I should be back on vodafone. Problem tho: no "beep beep, welcome to vodafone". 10am arrived, still no port out. I decided to ring them at around 3pm, to see was I one of the "rare occasions" and when could I expect it to be done. First thing, to get support on the Vodafone helpline, you have to enter your vodafone number. Oops, didn't really have one yet. Got though to a human after having to wade though several menu options and listen to several "We are pleased to announce vodafone have brought out several new offers X, Y and Z, which you won't have any choice but to hear us talk about, your call may be recorded if you ever get through, but your call is still important to us" messages, I got a human. So, I explained that I was still waiting to be welcomed into the Vodafone fold, and got put on hold a few times while she figured it out. Apparenly Voda had tried to get the number off O2 but o2 had refused to release it as I had only been a customer a short while. Instead of letting me know, Voda had decided to sit on it and do no more about it for a while! I told them to tell O2 I was a genuine port out, and she promised someone would get back to me soon.
That was around 3pm on weds, it's now about 11pm on thurs night and no word. I tried to get through earlier but depending at what stage in the menus I got to, I was told either "All our operators are busy" or "we are experiencing technical difficulties, please call again later". So, I now have 2 useless phones as I'm at my parents house and there's fuck-all signal for anyone except vodafone here, and besides, I'm down to about 20c O2 credit as I was expecting to be swapped over by now and I don't want to buy more as I could be transferred over at any time (yeah, right). So, am going to have to make some rather unfriendly phone calls tomorrow (from a land-line) to get this sorted.
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