O2 – read between the lines December 5, 2006

I can be clumsy at the best of times. In fact, in my case, the old adage “bread always falls the buttered side down” or the lesser known words of wisdom “spilled water always falls on my mobile phone”, ring quite true.

I recently spilled water on my phone – a reasonably new one. It didn’t take long before the thing starting acting up, crashing out and all round generally malfunctioning, apparently not liking the dip I had inadvertently given it earlier … before long I was phoneless.

A little history : I am a heavy mobile phone user. I changed from Vodafone to O2 because they were too expensive. O2’s charges were better. So I called in to more than 1 O2 store and pleaded my case for an upgrade, explaining the situation about the non-working, semi-shorted out hunk of junk that was now my poor Nokia. No luck. I had had an upgrade from the wonderful folks at O2 this past July and according to the lady assistant in the shop “I was way off the mark for another upgrade”. In other words, they are blatantly telling me I haven’t spent enough money yet so as to deserve a new handset … the ones they make in China for like 30c.

So in a last ditch effort not to splash out a handsome price for a new handset, I rang O2 themselves and after having painstakingly explained my case to the not very English-fluent operative, I was put through to one of the “supervisors”. I went through the ins-and-outs of the situation with him explaining how I was a heavy phone user and how I had switched from Vodafone to O2 and how all I needed was a handset and didn’t want the hassle of a whole new contract/number etc., when lo and behold, what does the supervisor say ? “You’re way off the mark for another upgrade ! There’s nothing I want to can do.” It was obvious this chap was not for turning, so he suggested (helpfully he thought) that instead of running back to Vodafone (worst case scenario) that I try to find an old handset because people rarely throw them out but then my new SIM card wouldn’t work in it but I could pay to have it converted … and so it went on … until finally he said “Thank you for choosing O2 !”. I hung up. Another valued customer completely satisfied with shite !

Just thought I’d bring that to your attention – so don’t ever drop your phone down the loo or drop water on the keypad or damage your phone in any way, because you ain’t getting a replacement if you’re “way off the mark !”. It now seems my best option is to buy a SpeakEasy phone with O2 (new number and the whole shebang) and use that SIM card only for “ringing my friends in the US or somewhere foreign”…

Lovely ! Tosserati !

PS : Something I also found out during my phone debacle … the character limit for writing a text message is shorter than the amount of “screen fulls” a phone will let you write … i.e. If you write a message that’s 2 or more screens in length, you will be charged for more than 1 text message. This hurts if you write postcard-sms’s on holidays like I did and never will do again …

ADDITION : I forgot to mention a rather important fact … it seems that no matter whether you have a working phone or not – or whether O2 will replace a broken phone or not – that your contract with them is legally binding and you’ll be billed accordingly.  Let’s clarify that – even if you have NO WORKING PHONE !!

Technorati tags : O2 : mobile phones : sms messaging : shite customer service

Padraig Nally trial starting this week December 4, 2006

Padraig Nally’s trial for the manslaughter of traveller John Ward begins this week and is sure to be a very contentious issue.

I have blogged about this before and will be, along with half the country, keeping a close eye on proceedings. One wonders whether the people on both sides of the argument can get a fair trial because of the amount of media coverage about this incident. The trial, in the Central Criminal Court, is likely to take the guts of two weeks to complete with the jury being instructed by the sitting Justice (O’Higgins) not base their decisions purely on the evidence presented to them and to disregard the media coverage.

In my opinion that would be very hard to do and doesn’t bode well for Mr.Nally, as the crime of breaking and entering (which Mr.Ward did) is less of a crime than the one of manslaughter.  One only hopes that they take into account the circumstances of the event, the threat Mr.Nally felt and the possible consequences of him having done nothing …

Technorati tags : padraig nally trial