Technological Difficulties

I am now feeling every one of my 39 years (yes, I know…I’m revealing my age…so sue me).  I have spent the whole of today trying to embrace the technology that is the SMARTPHONE.  I’ve been desperate to have one and thrilled to finally get one courtesy of a lovely friend and crafty lady.  All I had to do was go to Vodafone and get myself some service.  I have experienced technological difficulties.

I gleefully unwrapped the BlackBerry Storm 9500 from it’s packaging.  I gently plugged it in to charge the battery.  I left the protective strips on the screen and other cameras/etc so as not to have Smudge Fest 2010 on this glorious new piece of genius.  I tried to get help from Vodafone on Saturday.  Perhaps thanks to the heat wave that ground England to a halt, the Stamford branch of Vodafone was unable to do jack squat.  Their systems were down.  They couldn’t process anything.  I was told I would be contacted within two days.  I am not that patient.

I went home with my pretty black box, got online and managed to purchase a Sim Only contract for 12 months/etc/blahdeblahdeblah/ for the grand total of £20 per month.  Bish, bash, bosh.  I only had to wait for my Sim Card to arrive.  I polished the screen of the BlackBerry in anticipation.

The Sim Card arrived at 8:30am today!  I snapped it out of its wee card, opened the back of the BlackBerry and slotted it into place.  I waited for the brilliance to begin.  It never did.  I ended up with an SOS symbol in the upper right corner of the screen.  I felt that was somehow appropriate.  I asked Twitter for help.  It came in dribs and drabs.  Ultimately, Twitter suggested ringing the customer service line of Vodafone.  Dammit!  I had to break down and speak to a person.

Said person was able to sort out a few issues and I had a signal for approximately 8 milliseconds.  A ray of hope.  I thought that going to the Vodafone store again would finally sort out everything I needed.  I was wrong.  I communicated to the Vodafone representative that I was having troubles with the signal in my home.  I had none.  She said, “Oh, yeah, well, there’s a mast down in your area.  Lots of people have been complaining about that.  It should be back up in 2-3 weeks.”  2 to 3 WEEKS????  How is that possible???

The Vodafone girlie managed to get my email routed to my BlackBerry and communicate to me that I can in fact IM any BlackBerry user anyWHERE in the world.  My Dad has a BlackBerry.  I can IM him!  Woo hoo!  I was happy.  I got a few emails whilst in Stamford.  I tried to send one whilst at my inlaws.  That’s where the fun ended.  Once home, with no signal, I realised that I was missing something.

When I had my Nokia N97 Mini trial, I had been able to link into the wi-fi signal in my home courtesy of my BT Home Hub.  I thought…why can’t I get the wi-fi signal on the BlackBerry Storm 9500?  I tried to set up a connection but couldn’t find anything.  Again, I turned to Twitter.  Twitter helped me but once again I resorted to the Customer Service line because Twitter wasn’t quite fast enough.

I spent 20 minutes on hold listening to RUBBISH music.  I had been put on hold by one person who couldn’t seem to tell me why I couldn’t find the wi-fi connection setup on the BlackBerry Storm 9500.  20 minutes later another someone came through and I had to communicate all of my data again and explain my situation.  After another 3-5 minutes of um-ing and ah-ing and being put on hold again, I checked Twitter.  @VodafoneUK had messaged me while I was in On-Hold Hell.  They told me that the BlackBerry Storm 9500 doesn’t have wi-fi capabilities!

Pardon?! I’ve gotten this far and you’re only just NOW telling me that my pretty, new, shiny, lovely BlackBerry Storm 9500 DOES NOT HAVE WI-FI CAPABILITIES?!?!  The Vodaphone someone in my ear said, “Oh, dear, yes, I’m so sorry, in fact, the BlackBerry Storm 9500 does NOT have wi-fi capabilities.”

Gee.  Thanks for that small piece of critical information.  Great.  So, not only is the mast in my area down for the next few weeks rendering my phone completely useless but there’s no wi-fi option.  Mind you, if I leave the house and find a mast that does function I will be able to utilise some of the functions.

I’m more than grateful for the generous gift of this lovely phone BUT I’m not grateful for Vodafone who couldn’t seem to clue me in before I made the commitment of a sim only 12-month contract and I’m rather disappointed that BlackBerry would even have a phone WITHOUT WI-FI capabilities.  So, I now give BlackBerry a chance to remedy this.

Dear BlackBerry, If you’d like to give a rather nice mummy blogger the LATEST BlackBerry technology which has Wi-Fi capabilities, thus enabling me to leave our house, retrieve emails, Twitter like a celebrity AND Instant Message with my Dad who lives in America and who I haven’t seen, in person, since October of last year, I’ll happily accept your donation and wear a badge on my site until the end of time advertising BlackBerry and all that is good about your company.  Love, Me