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
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If you are on vodafone there is a sure signal thing you can get that basically uses wifi to make up for their pitiful lack of signal (my work phone was a Vodafone & spent hours of my bed rest hanging out of an upstairs window trying to have a signal…)
Otherwise I hope they sort it soon
Thanks lovely! You’re so helpful. If only everyone could be!
Hopefully your issues get sorted soon!
Hmmm, makes me glad I’m an Apple Fanboy and as such wouldn’t entertain anything but an iPhone. Hope you get your issues sorted out soon though. Checkout the app ‘WhatsApp Messenger’ it’s an app for iPhone or Blackberry that allows you to send free texts to anyone who has the app installed on their iPhone or Blackberry via 3G or WiFi. You don’t need to have the app open and texts come in using push and look like regular SMSs. It’s only a $1.19 here so costs virtually nothing. I use this all the time with our family and it works really well, particularly as I don’t have a lot of monthly call credit on my plan.
Is there anyway you could change network? I went with orange for my blackberry and from day one they have been fab – everytime I get through to people at the orange helpdesk who are obviously not English I ask to get put through to the blackberry customer service – they have been fantastic!!
Once you get your BB finally working , your’ll love it. I love getting my emails though on my mobile and getting bb messenger messages! 
x
I wish I could help some more
Well, we’ll see. The BB I received from a friend is a Vodafone BB so I don’t know that I can use it other than with Vodafone. Vodafone has been tweeting with me today so we’ll see if they want to remedy the situation and get in my good graces again!
Sounds very poor, especially the mast being down for so long. I highly recommend Android phones, they are cheaper to run than iPhone and do all the same things – they had their own app store which admittedly only has about 20,000 apps compared to iPhone’s squillion but hey they’re mostly free and there’s only so many apps a gal can cope with.
I’m a bit confused though – you say the phone was a gift but you have commited to a contract? Do you mean handset was given to you but you are locked into the service for 12 months? There is usually a cooling off period if you kick up enough of a fuss.
For Blackberry (RIM) try http://www.rim.com/newsroom/media/executive/index.shtml
For Vodafone http://campaigns.vodafone.co.uk/guylaurence/?WT.srch=1&cid=ppc-go
Go get ‘em tiger ;o)
Karin, I’m a bit unsure exactly what it is that you think the chief executive or the PR is going to do for you?
Have you tried asking the customer service team to offer a discount for the 3 weeks you won’t have service, or to refund that portion of the contract?
Oh Karin, sorry you’ve had problems. Tis a bummer the mast is down but I guess these things happen.
Bit puzzled as to why you’re so keen to be available cyber-wise all the time. I find it a complete curse and now turn off email/tweet notifications. It impinges so much into my life and there’s nothing so urgent that can’t wait til I’m home.
What emails do you have that need answering straight away? Is it an overbearing boss? Perhaps you should have a word. Everyone deserves some down time (not sure of your circumstances, sorry!).
Did your friend buy the phone especially for you? Or was it one knocking around a cupboard? Would be hard maybe to upgrade without hurting her feelings and appearing ungrateful but I guess it depends on the circs she gave it to you.
Have you thought about trying to cancel your Vodaphone contract as it’s clearly not the one for you? I’m on Orange and for £25 a month I get loads of texts/calls and a Blackberry which allows me to use the Internet.
Or maybe you could just enjoy your pal’s gift and check your emails when you get in? That’s what I’d do but I’m lazy! Hope you get it sorted xx
Hi my Dear One. I have a Blackberry Storm ll and for the most part love it. I’m having a bit of a problem getting good reception without the caller or myself hearing every other word. It’s taken me two months to really get the hang of it, but it’s a marvelous creation once it works properly. Tomorrow I’ll be back in the Verizon store to have them check it out once again.
“Can you hear me now?”
Your Mama’
How can RIM make a BlackBerry without wifi? By developing it with Vodafone! The first 9500s were exclusive to Vodafone and cynics say they insisted on not having wifi capability because that, in turn, means more data revenue…
Sure Signal is a good idea but you basically have to pay to cover up Vodafone’s deficiencies.
Hope you get a resolution!
Hi Karin,
As I work for Vodafone UK’s Web Relations Team I thought I’d pop on here to acknowledgement that I’d read about your experience.
It’s certainly a shame to hear that things haven’t gone as expected since your friend gifted you the Blackberry Storm but now that you’re in touch with us via email I’m sure we can help you with getting this sorted out.
As we’ll need some additional information from you in order to access your account I’ll reply to your email in a moment and as soon as you’ve replied I’ll come back to you again as soon as possible.
Kind regards,
Lee
Web Relations Team
Vodafone UK