And I thought vodafone phone support were bad......

Well, I just rang up HP tech support to try to arrange to get my laptop fixed. Jesus christ! I tried to avoid doing this in the first place by trying to use their email support, but the only reply I got on that was "yeah, your laptop's pretty much screwed, contact our out of warranty people to arrange a pick-up" at which point I got directed to the UK cust care web page to get the number. So much for email....

So, in my misguided attempt to avoid talking to the UK, I go looking up the irish site. So, I ring the irish cust care number for out of warranty support (a 1550 number so I'm being charged 80c a min). First thing I hear is a voice with a British accent telling me I'm being charged 60p a minute for the call - so great, their Irish number automatically redirects to the UK anyway. Next thign I get a guy with an extremely thick accent which I can barely make out (and I'm normally good at working around accents), who after I explain that I need to get the laptop picked up for repair, forwards me to the tech support team. So, after about 4-5mins on hold, I get a guy with a Sitt Iffrikan accent (so is 50-50 whether I'm still onto the UK), to whom I have to explain things again. As soon as he hears that it's out of warranty, he says "ok, you have to talk to the special out of warranty team", and passes me over. This time I'm definitely talking to Mumbai. So, I explain the problem yet again, and then I get told that they have a standard rate for an out-of-warranty repair of £257.61 and I'll need to ring this other UK number to get a pick-up arranged!

So because I'm about 3-4 weeks out of warranty, I have to pay €301 (or just under 1/3 the price I paid for it in the first place) to get it fixed and talk to yet another 2-3 helldesk drones to arrange it! Think I'm going to try to find someone else who'll fix it......

Well, that's my laptop fucked.......

OK, have tried a few things here with my laptop, and it looks like it's totally hosed. Whatever that windows update did, it was bad. It looks like it was trying to do a firmware upgrade and fried the graphics card, 'cos even the bios screen is screwed up. Tried getting into the system restore partition, and was no good, couldn't see it. Tried putting in an opensolaris liveCd and still couldn't see anything, so I know it wasn't just windows. If you can't see your bios screen tho it's a pretty good indication that you're screwed. And to make it even more fun, I took out the HD and put it in another laptop, and now it seems that with all the constant restarts that were happening 'cos of the graphics card being screwed, the windows partition was screwed up as well! Luckily, most of my important files are on the 2nd HD.......

So now I have to go looking for the receipt for the fecking laptop now, and hope the shop I got it in does repairs - if not I have to rely on the tender mercies of HP's customer care dept! Have the machine about 13 months as well so is just out of warranty too :-(

It's so true.... :-)

Nvidia users, beware windows update!

Here's a word of warning to anyone out there using a HP Pavillion laptop running an Nvidia graphics cards: beware of "automatic updates" on Windows Vista!

I was running a manual update yesterday (I don't trust M$ enough to let them update automatically, they've buggered up too many machines on me), and one fo the updates that windows was telling me I should install was the "NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller". Foolishly I let windows decide that it knew what sort of hardware drivers should be on my machine and checked it for install. Next thing, after I did the obligatory "windows has updated a trivial non-critical piece of software so you must restart" reboot, I realised I had a problem. Windows started no probs but nearly immediately after logging in, my display went crazy, the usual kind of shit you get when a graphics driver has gone screwy. tried rebooting but then got a bigger shock - even the BIOS screen was screwed up! My screen at the moment is a sort of mustard color with a few pixels flashing in the background in a slightly different shade of mustard, in the sort of pattern that indicates it's trying to display about 12 desktops at the same time.

Normally in this situation I'd just curse microsoft under my breath and roll back to the last system restore point before the update, which I've had to do many times before. This time tho it's different: even the BIOS start-up screen is shagged so I can't even see to get into safe mode! Hell, I can't even see the options to activate the system restore partition that comes with the laptop (my only easy way to do a reinstall as no manufacturers ship CDs any more)! System is totally fucked! Am going to have to go off and try to find an install CD for something that lets me access my HD to hose out the fecking bad driver! :-(

Shoud've just gotten a new number to begin with...... :-(

AAAGH!!!!

There's a chinese phrase that I use occasionally, "Ku xiao bu de" (哭笑不得), which translates as "not knowing whether to laugh or cry". Well, that's where I am with vodafone at the moment!

Last update I had here was that I was having problems accessing the voadfone.ie website. Well, that was only the tip of the frickin' iceberg. I tried setting up that "calls and texts to 087 for free" thing on the phone (which the muppet in the shop never told me I had to do, he just said I'd get it automatically) by sending "FREE" to 50222. What did I get back? "I'm sorry, you must be a Vodafone prepay customer to use this service". Eh? Funny, I thought I was, seeing as I was adding and using credit on my account! Ok, rang up the helldesk again, asked them what was going on. Guess what, I wasn't actually a proper vodafone customer! Seems port out #4 failed, so I was still sort of on the O2 network. So, what did I have to do? Go back into the shop and ask for the port-out again!

Right then, off in I went last Friday week. Explained the situation to yer man in the shop (I should just write it down and hand it to them at this stage) and so I got a new SIM Card and told it'd be activated in about an hour. Guess what? It wasn't. Strange that. So, waited until Monday and rang up cust care again (I know the number off by heart now). Guess what? It hadn't gone through! Meanwhile, I couldn't get into the website either, so I asked them about that too. Yer man did a bit of investigating and told me that my account was apparently coming up on different systems as (a) a bill-pay account (b) a pre-pay account and (c) an O2 account, depending on where he looked! Guess what I was told the solution would be? Yup, you guessed it, go into the shop and ask them to do the port-out again. So I did so, and told them "ignore whatever it is you are seeing on your screen, it's a port-out from o2 pre-pay to vodafone pre-pay". So, I left them to it, and went back to work.

That night I got another "welcome to Vodafone prepay" text, so I thought, maybe it's fixed. I go to the website and sure enough, I could get in now! There was one problem tho: according to the website, I was still a bill-pay account, and moreover, I had a bill saying I owed them €38.15 on what looked like 2 pre-pay accounts! So, I go ring them up again, and my account is still in the shagged state it was the day before. I get the usual advice about going into the shop and refused, as it's be the 4th or 5th time I did it (I've lost count at this stage) so the nice foreign girl said she'd put in the call herself and I should see the results in an hour or two. Guess what? No change!

So, I decide to go the route of email, as quite frankly I was pissed off talking to the helpdesk and not getting anywhere. So, I bang off a rather testy email on the website "contact us" form on Friday last. I get a reply about 24hrs later: "Can you provide us with your mobile number?" What? of course, I didn't actually give it to you because I foolishly assumed that as I was logged into my vodafone account and it looked like the number was automatically attached to the "contact us" mail page, that you'd know who I was! I sent it off, and heard nothing back.

So, I tried ringing up on Monday again (the 8th June, or approx 3 weeks since I started having all these problems). Got one guy who seemed to be making progress on getting a fix - and then I was disconnected while I was on hold while he was talking to the port-out team. Rang up again and got someone else who seemed to actually have a clue. After a bit of digging, she realised that the reason I looked like I still had a billpay account was because I still had - the bill on the website was the last line rental on my previous account, which I had foolishly assumed that they'd included on the last month's bill that they'd sent me after I'd already disconnected. The pre-pay account wasn't set up properly as well - whoever had set it up had apparently not given me a customer number, so the system couldn't register me for stuff like he free texts, webpage etc. So, she got me to give her the number from the back of the SIM and set it up for me, and said the registration for the webpage would take about 24hrs but could be done sooner. So, a few hours later I tried it and it worked! I had a pre-pay setup and could see my balance and send web texts and all! Alleluia, it was all fixed! :-)

And then we come to around 6pm last night.

So, I was leaving work, and was txting Michelle to say I was heading out to Blackrock and would be back around 8ish, but for some reason I couldn't login to the webpage, kept getting "Sorry, logon services are currently unavailable (SRV-WL-57).". OK, Vodafone have screwed up their website again, normally happens around once every 2-3 days. So, tried sending the txt from my phone. "Sending failed". Eh? Kept trying, and it kept failing. Tried checking my balance to see how much did I have, and got "service unavailable". Tried ringing 1741 and got "we are experiencing technical difficulties". Tried making a call and just kept getting a busy tone. Thought it might be that the network had totally gone tits-up, but when I got home, M's phone (also 087 pre-pay) was fine.

So, rang them up earlier this morning. After a bit more faffing around, I got an answer. It seems that despite what everyone had been saying for the last 3 weeks, my account was coming up invalid and coming up as only created on Monday. As my account was invalid, some automatic process must have reefed me off the system. Meanwhile, Vodafone still thought that the number was owned by O2, and O2 were still saying that they didn't own the number. Apparently Vodafone's porting team were refusing to just fully set up my account as without o2 giving their blessing on what should have been the port-out, it would be "illegal to do so". WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T THEY SAY THIS 3 WEEKS AGO?

So, that's it. I fucking give up. I wanted to keep my old number as I've had it for about 11 years, and I didn't want to go though the hassle of letting everyone know of the change, updating the contact info on my bank accounts, credit card accounts etc. I'm sick of banging my head off their tech support people tho, however much hassle it is updating everything and letting everyone know, it is infinitesimally less hassle than actually trying to get the fucker fixed. The original cock-up can probably be blamed on a combination of o2 and Vodafone, but the sheer incompetence of the Vodafone helpdesk/tech support in figuring out the problem over the last 3 weeks is pretty much fucking mind-blowing. Actually no, I'm not blaming the helpdesk people, they seemed to actually want to try to fix it for me, it's the numptys in the porting team and the 2nd/3rd line tech support are the incompetents. I work in 3rd line tech support, and I know if I had a case going on as long as this for a user who tried ringing up to get it fixed as many times as I have, I'd have been shot for it by now.

Given a choice, I'd be dropping Vodafone like a hot brick at this stage, but seeing as there is zero coverage for Meteor or O2 in my house in Waterford, I'm stuck with them. Have just gone into the shop and gotten my new number, and even managed to get the €15 that was still on my old account before they nuked it transferred over. Now to go updating all my accounts and letting everyone know I have a new number......

Funny thing is, I was in the Vodafone shop getting my new SIM card, and there was another girl in there trying to port over from O2. Sales assistant was saying to her "well, this might take a day or so, but don't worry, you'll have no problems porting over from O2 pre-pay to us". I was tempted to run over, grab her by the shoulders and shout at her, "Run! Run now, while you can! they'll fuck up the transfer and you'll be stuck in limbo until you want to beg for sweet, sweet death, but you wont be able to, your number is doomed!"

Election posters

I was walking up Westmoreland st yesterday and I saw a few rather interesting posters for the elections:



Translation: "If we get into government we'll fire all the friends and relatives of the last government that they put into the civil service, and we'll replace them with our own friends and relatives!"

And:



I somehow doubt that this is a genuine Fianna Fáil election poster! Either that or they're boasting: "Yeah, we did all this, we know you don't like us but we don't care, this is only a local & eropean election so you can't get rid of us anyway, nyah nyah!"