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!

Vodafone pt II: "All customers are equal......"

"...but some are more equal than others.

Well, I rang up Vodafone like I said I was going to do, to see could they do anything about the upgrade for me. Nope! According to the support guy I got (who was actually Irish, I was nearly shocked not to hear an Indian voice), the way they used to determine upgrades was how long you were a vodafone member, but back around December they moved to a new system which adds in a whole load more qualifications. Now, your eligibility is determined by stuff like how long you've been a member, whether you pay on time, whether you pay by direct debit or not, what price plan you're on and how much you spend on it. Am all good there apart from the last one - apparently since the new system went in, no-one who's been on the lower price plan (perfect fit 50) for less than 18 months has ever gotten an upgrade. Seems ppl on that plan don't spend enough according to Vodafone...... Guy even asked his supervisor could they push the upgrade through anyway, but the new automated system doesn't even allow them to do that

So, given my current account, I won't be able to get a new phone for at least another 6 months. So, I'd need to set up a new account. Asked the guy would I be able to do that and transfer over my existing number to use that. Apparently I can't, the only way to do that wud be to move my existing number to pre-pay, set up a new account to get the new phone, and keep the old number as a backup. Now I know that last year when I got this phone, I got the number transferred from my old account to a new account, and then back again - but then again it was a company phone so the new account was a business account, so vodafone probably bed over backwards for those guys.

So, according to Vodafone, the easiest way for me to get a new phone and keep my existing number is to move to O2! You'd think that these days that any company would want to keep their existing customers if they possibly can, especially given that the turnover in accounts with mobile phone companies is quite high. Apparently Vodafone tho don't think my business is important enough to them to allow exceptions, despite the fact that they've been getting my business since I left college. Well, is off to ebay etc for me for my new phone so, and if I can't get a good price there, Vodafone will not only be losing the potential €120 from my upgrade, they may be losing a customer too!

Vodafone: "your call is important to us - but not your loyalty"

Well, as if I needed it, another indication that once you sign up for something with one of the big companies, they don't care about you any more. I decided I wanted a new phone for my birthday, so I picked one out (Samsung S8300, the new 2Tocco Ultra") and went into the vodafone shop. Phone is €429 SIM-free but only €129 on Perfect fit 50, which is the price plan I'm on. So, I go up to the counter, say "I want XYZ phone", dude asks me if I'm already a vodafone customer and I say yes. So far so good. Next thing tho, I get told "sorry, you're not eligible for an upgrade". I ask how much the phone wud be if I wanted to get it, and he said €429, or the full whack. The only way to get it at the discount price is apparently to get a new account with a new number.

So, despite the fact I've been with vodafone for about 10 years, pay my bills by direct debit so I never miss a payment, and have my existing phone a year already (literally, was apparently a year yesterday, dude in the shop said), I'm not enough of a "good customer" to warrant getting an upgrade. Come to think about it, in the last 10 years I think I've only been eligible for an upgrade 2, maybe 3 times - most of the times I get my phones myself. Apparently a "good customer" is one who spends lots of money with them, and I keep my bill pretty low by using the 300 free web texts a month that I'm entitled to as a customer, and make most of my phone calls from work.

If however I was someone who wasn't on vodafone and decided I wanted to drink the kool-aid and be enfolded in their warm embrace, I'd get the phone at the cheaper price. Then again, even if I was like that, I still couldn't get the phone I really wanted: vodafone ireland, in their infinite wisdom, seem to have decided that the Sony Ericsson C905, which every other network in Ireland have had out since before Xmas, is still too new to offer to the their customers. So, instead, they're still trying to plug as their #1 high-end phone the Blackberry Storm, which no-one who has a choice in the matter actually wants, and those who have to have it (i.e. office types) don't like. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to change network: both my parents and my g/f are on vodafone and have free calls & texts to me, which they wouldn't have if I switched to say O2. so, I'm stuck with vodafone.

So, what do I do, suck it down, and pay the full price? Yeah, right, screw that. Ebay is an option, but the last time I did that with my Sony Ericsson w800i, I had no end of trouble when the phone went tits-up and I had to get it repaired. I could cancel my account and sign up as one of the new customers that vodafone seem to favour over me. Problem with that is I'll prob lose the number I've been using these last 10 years, and I don't want to go having to let everyone in my phone book know and then memorize a new number just for vodafone's convenience. So, will try ringing the customer support line tmro and hopefully if I get someone who can actually speak english, I'll try to see if I can get the upgrade, or at least switch accounts and keep my existing number. I'm not doing it tho because I love vodafone and can't imagine life without them, but because I'm not being given any other choice.

New Shiny Shiny

Well, I have meself a nice new phone here. Seems it's company policy that everyone has a company phone, so I took the opportunity to use the company discount to try out a Nokia for the first time in about 5-6 years. So, my new Nokia E51 has just landed on my desk. It looks nice anyway - about the same length and breadth as my K800i but about half as thick. I can't play with it til I get a full charge on it now, but I have a good 2 1/2hrs to play with it on my way home on the train this evening :-)

Alleluia!

Finally, I'm after getting my phone back! At least, I think it's my phone. There are a few images & sounds on it that I'm pretty sure don't come with a "vanilla" factory-clean phone, and I'm not 100% sure that the dent in the camera cover is exactly the same as on the one I sent in for repair, but at this stage I'm perfectly willing to take the shop's word for it that it's mine. So, third (or fourth?) time lucky! Now all I have to do is copy all of my stuff back onto it. It's going to be a bit of a pain in the hole moving the phone book back - the SIM card only holds ne number/field per entry so the entries I have on my Sharp which have more than one field are going to be fun to reproduce, but I'll manage. I've lost a good few pics, and a few numbers and stuff, but at least I still have all of the apps, themes, sounds etc on the computer. At least it givs me something to do over the weekend.....

James Bond's poor choice of phones

You know, I feel sorry for James Bond. Sure, he gets the girl every time and all, and he has cool gadgets most of the time (altho invisible cars are a bit silly), but in his latest adventure he has the misfortune to be stuck with Sony Ericsson gear. Now I'm sure that they work very well for him and all, but god help him if he has any problems with them that Q can't fix and he has to send it back to Sony Ericsson to get repaired.

Finally, after 7 weeks of being dicked around by Sony Ericsson with my phone, I got the call on friday to say that the phone was back from the factory and it was repaired. So, I went in yesterday to get it. I handed over my docket, and the guy took out my phone. Or was it?

I took one look at it, and said "that's not my phone" - the dent in the camera lens cover where I dropped it a good while back wasn't there, and the quickshare logo from the front was missing as well. Sure enough, when yer man went to check the IMEI numbers, it was a different phone that SE had sent back. So, seeing as it wasn't mine, naturally I couldn't take it - I have ot wait until tomorrow to find out what's happened to my phone.

So, to recap all the fun and games I've had with my phone:

• I tried the Sony Ericsson Online Firmware Upgrade of the phone, which screwed it up so badly it wouldn't turn on any more.


• I brought it into the shop, where they said it'd take 2 weeks to repair, as they had to send it back to SE.


• Two weeks later, they called me up and said that SE had said that yes, they could repair my phone, it'll take two weeks. Did I want to go ahead? I stifled my urge to say "well duh!" and said "yes" instead.


• Two weeks later, I get a call from the shop - SE hadn't apparently gotten the confirmation to fix the phone and had sent it back unfixed. Did I want to send it back to get done again?


• Two weeks later again, I went into ths hop to find out what had happened. Again, apparently they hadn't got the confirmation to fix it, so it still wasn't done. Yer man promised to light a fire under them and see what he could do.


• A week later (this week), they had supposedly fixed my phone, but sent the wrong one back to the shop. Now I have to wait to see will I actually get my one back, or have they sent it to 007 by mistake.

Licence to Kill - I wish!

things of a hardware nature

Well, I finally managed to get a spare battery for my iPod! After trying loads of shops, and each one telling me to tr somewhere else, and then being told the best solution was to send it to AppleCare to get done for €150, I finally spotted it in Maplin on the 3rd attempt (seems they'd just got them delivered in) for €32. So much for AppleCare! Now my only problem is that I left the bloody iPod in waterford last weekend so I cna't replace the batt yet! :-( Looking at the instructions it's not goign to be easy either - they use the word "prise" a bit too much in the booklet for my liking.......

And if only that were all my hardware problems sorted. The phone saga is still going on. I went into them on sat, 2 weeks after I last heard from them and 4 weeks afte rthey told me it'd take 2 weeks to fix. Last time I was told that seeing as I couldn't prve it was under warranty, I'd have to pay €90 to get it fixed and it'd take 2 weeks. So, I go back in expecting to pay out my €90 (or half what I paid for my phone) and get my phone back. Nope! Apparently Ericsson had lost the confirmation order to actually fix the damn thing and sent it back unfixed - a common problem with them apparently. So the guy asked me did I want to send it back and get it fixed again, which would take another week. I bit back my reply of "well, duh, what the f**k good is a broken phone" and said yeah. Think just to be on the safe side I might see who wants to get me a new mobile for Xmas.

Just to top things off, along a similar note, the strap on my fake rolex broke a few weeks back, and I need ot get it fixed. I thought I had some spare links for it but couldn't find them, so I brought the broken links and the watch into the shop to see oculd they do anything for me. Nope, will need a new strap. This of course will probably cost me more than the watch cost originally. Have one last chance, I got another guy a fake rolex of the same model too, will have to see if he has spare links still.....

And on teh last hard-ware related issue of the day, the gfx card on my laptop is acting up again. It seems that whatever they did in firefox 1.0.5/6 to fix the prob where firefox crashes ATI cards & OpenGL, it's back again in firefix 2.0. I upgraded a few days ago and now am lucky to go 5mins of using forefox without the fecking screen freezing or goign black. Sometimes I just get a screen flash and get told "hardware rendeing is fucked, we're gone back to software rendering" which is grand for me when I'm not laying games, but I don't want to be stuck like that for good

It deffo seems to be a firefox issue as well, as I'm using IE7 here for the last few hours and nary a crash have I seen. Thing is, after using firefox, IE7 sucks! It has tabs now which is handy, but you sort of get used to all them nifty little extrensions and stuff, and the font rendering on some of the pages I go to a lot is absolutely brutal (probably the page rather than the browser, but still looks sucky).

phone upgrades :-(

Well, I decided a few weeks ago to upgrade the firmware on my phone using the instructions at this site, and I think I may have killed my phone. I followed the instructions, downloaded the app and went to run it. It dind't work the first few times as every time I plugged in the phone, as bloody windows autorun kept interrupting and trying to download pics from the memory card! Got it to shut up eventually, and the firmware install semed to go ok.

After I put the SIM card back in tho, nada. The phone wouldn't turn on any more. I tried to do the "recommended" way of a soft boot by holding down the 'c' key and plugging it into the USB port, but nothing. Decided to leave the battery drain down for afew days and try it again, nothing. Looked on the web for the solution, and all anyone could come up with was "send it back to sony ericsson". So, thinking that seeing as it's half the name of the phone so they might have something to do with it, I went into the Sony shop. Nope, they don't do phones apparently (never mind the fact that as the sales guy was saying this I was looking over his shoulder at the w800i in the display cabinet. Muppet.).

Finally found a shop to do it, and the second I mentioned "sony ericsson" and "online firmware update" the guy winced. Apparenlty that thing rarely ever works, and he doens't know why they even have it up there. So, now my phone has ot go back to Ericsson (as sony apparenly don't want anything to do with it) and I'll get it back with all data wiped in about 2 weeks.

Then another problem arose. I had the IMEI number so they could check to see was the phone reported stolen, but the guy then said that I'd probably ned proof of purchase before tehy;d fix it for me. Problem is, I got it off ebay so I don't actually have a real proof of purchase for it! Sent it off anyway, said I might get away with it.

So, here's hoping I have my phone back in 2 weeks time!