Vodafone

Okay, so I lied about the Royal Mail update because I've decided that I would much rather complain about my cell phone provider. Vodafone. Don't ask about the spelling, I don't even know. According to Wikipedia the name comes from: "voice data fone", which would be fine if that's how you spell phone, but it's not. Vodafone: Can't spell, terrible customer service, and all around crappy phone company. Woo! 

Their mascots are bees. This alone should have convinced me to find another provider, but they offered the best deals on international calling, so I signed up for a pay as you situation when I got to this glorious, but frustrating country. 

Well, we all know how the first phone ended up. Like I think I wrote earlier [if I didn't, I meant to], the Samsung Monte was absolute crap. It was extra frustrating because every time I posted to the website forum for help, no one knew what they were doing. It was all, "We don't have that phone on hand, so let me tell you a way to fix it that might work on a Samsung phone but definitely does not work on this Samsung phone." Also, they were kind of patronizing. 

Before I left Canada, I had a Blackberry. Now, I don't want to say that Canada makes the best phones in the world, but I will say that my Blackberry was at least eight hundred times better than my Samsung Monte. Easily. Bell Aliant may be a terrible phone company, even worse than Vodafone, but my Blackberry was awesome. If an e-mail went to my Blackberry, I could delete it from the phone, go home, and it would still be on the server. If an e-mail went to my Monte's ActiveSync, and I deleted it, it completely disappeared. And that, folks, is how I lost my online bank information [the first time]. Who wants their bank information on their phone? Definitely not me. So, when it showed up there, I deleted it. I went home and it was totally gone from my e-mail account. It wasn't even in the trash. 

Yeeep, that was definitely a fun call to Barclays.

TANGENT: Let's be honest, keeping your banking information in your e-mail account is also preeeetty ridiculous, but it would have been nice for that information to stay in existence on the server until I could get home and write it down somewhere not on the Internet.

So, I took to the Vodafone message boards, and asked if it was possible to delete an e-mail from my phone but keep it on the e-mail server. Because this country has no imagination, my only response was some random who was all, "Why would you want to do that?" Oh, I don't know, because carrying around my online bank information on a cell phone seems really freaking dumb. 

I let it go, but the phone was still pretty terrible. It was touch screen, and I missed so many calls because sometimes it would just decide that the touch part of touch screen is optional. And good luck trying to phone anywhere that requires pressing numbers for options [including Vodafone] because months into owning the phone I still don't know how to do it. I'm like a pigeon doing a superstitious routine for food, I button mashed the thing until, magically, the dial pad appeared. 

What I'm saying is that phone dying was the best
thing to ever happen to my blood pressure.

I replaced the dead Monte with a Samsung Galaxy because I am both a sucker for punishment and it was the cheapest phone with 3G. It's been pretty fabulous though. Setting up my e-mail took seconds instead of days, the touch screen part works all the time! I guess I just got a lemon with my first Samsung phone. 

Unfortunately, Vodafone still sucks. The store closest to me is sort of useless. Example, before I left for Edinburgh the ActiveSync on my phone decided it wasn't going to work anymore. I took the phone to the shop and they did a hard reset. It didn't work, obviously, it didn't work when I did it, so why would it work for them? The guy shrugged and went, "You could come back when the pay as you go guy is here, but I think it's a problem with Google's servers." Yep, the reason my phone stopped receiving e-mails for about two weeks was because of Google and their broken servers. This clearly makes so much more sense than the problem being Vodafone. 

Now, my SIM card has been messing up, as you do when you're an electronic and go swimming. But I waited until I got back to London to replace it. Of course, the Vodafone shop near me waited until I got back to London to randomly and without warning close. I don't know if they're renovating or shutting down entirely, but there's never anyone in there, no notes on the door, and no information on the website. Er, okay, then... 

The other Vodafones are a tube ride away. I wouldn't bother at this point, but I'm going away again on Friday and I need credit in the form of Freedom Packs, which for some reason you can't buy online. So, the website store locater tells me there's a Vodafone on Holloway Road. 

The store locater is a liar. 

I walked up and down that stupid street for ages. I finally used the store locater function on my phone, and it said there was one on Clerkenwell Road, which is not on any maps by Holloway Road. 

Great, thanks Vodafone! I really wanted to waste the money on the tube ride, and then have to waste more money trying to get to Oxford Street because I know there's a Vodafone there because I've seen it with my own eyes. 

I eventually get what I need, then go back home to add my vouchers to my lovely, working phone with it's new, working SIM card. Preferably today so I can phone my credit card company and inform them that I'm going to countries not on my list so they shouldn't shut down my card if they see 'strange purchases'. 

Yeah, right, Vodafone doesn't approve. I tried to activate my vouchers by telephone. Nope. I tried to activate my vouchers online. Nope. 

So, instead of getting trip stuff done, I wrote this rant. 

Thanks Vodafone!