waider

My bag turned up this morning. If I'm reading the site correctly, it actually turned up last night, and they handed it off to a next-day-delivery courier. One of the things in the bag was my office phone, which when powered on, received a text message saying,

"Welcome from O2. You are now roaming on the %%Network%% network. [-]"

For good measure, they send me the same message an hour or so later, complete with the same "%%Network%%" bit in it. CODING FAIL.

Update on my mystery multi-owner mobile phone account: I emailed care@. I got an autoreply telling me they'd endeavour to respond within 24 hours (this used be "we will reply within 24 hours"...), followed some 24 hours later by a request for security information to confirm that it was in fact my account (I am restraining myself from whining further about this). I emailed back, noting in passing that there appeared to be no tracking information beyond my email address - no ticket id, etc. I wonder how that looks on the customer support side? Anyway, today I got a message indicating that the issue had been escalated to the appropriate people. Tonight, looking at the website again, I'm getting the message on a more-or-less random basis. It's like somewhere there's a database with a split brain, and in one part I'm sole propietor of the phone, and in the other it's still somehow attached to the employer I transferred the phone from. Fills me with comfort, that does.

(This was an email exchange, rather than a phonecall; I'm paraphrasing and, in fact, inserting totally original dialogue rather than citing, though)

Vodafone Customer Care: Hi, Vodafone Customer Care, how can we help you?
Me: Hi, I seem to be having some trouble using your Picture Album service. I sent it some pictures from my mobile and they've not shown up on the site.
Vodafone Customer Care: Yes, we're having some trouble with that feature. It doesn't work right now.
Me: I see. And you haven't updated the site to reflect this.
VCC: Nope.
Me: And when do you think this will be fixed?
VCC: No idea.
Me: Uh, fine. Thanks.
VCC: Is there any other way in which we can make your day less pleasant?
Me: No, that'll be all.

To be fair, the Photo Album service is free, and as far as I know they're the only Irish mobile telco that provide such a free service (to clarify: I can send a photo via MMS from my cameraphone to a particular number and at some point thereafter it will show up in an area of Vodafone's website accessible only to me[1], which I subsequently hooked up to a script which grabs the photo and posts it to Flickr) but I'm sure there's something in the Sale Of Goods Act of 1981 which covers telling people they're getting a service when said service does not, in fact, work.

[1] And every Vodafone helpdesker ever, since every time I run into a problem they ask for my password. Apparently they don't get any sort of executive override.

I tried to log onto Vodafone's website to check how much recent phone activity is going to cost me. I got past the basic login, then clicked on "Billing", where it asks me to enter my SEEKRIT CUSTOMER SERVICE NUMBER (aka the last 4 digits of my account number). I got an error message, the same one as I got a few months back and which took at least a fortnight to get fixed. After 24 hours of it being broken, I figured I'd *shudder* contact the customer abuse department. I changed my password first, since I know from past experience that they'd ask for it, and I didn't want to give out the password I usually use for this sort of online thing. Then I emailed the problem description, and ended it with

Userid: [my userid]
Password: [my new password]
SEEKRIT CODE: [aforementioned account code]

Just now I got a response, quoting my original mail in its entirety, asking for my password.

GAH.

Sigh. DSL is great and all, but a billing query leads me to discover that I've been double-billed for the installation charge AND it's not been billed against my original account number despite being explicitly told that it was.

Right, there's the bonus. There's also the big project I'm not talking about for which I have, well, lived up to my job title (Systems Architect) and damn well architected the system (modulo backfilling of details). I've gotten two parts of another project working today. And in a buoyant mood, I emailed the nice ComReg person to ask what sort of tracking options I have for my complaint, and she replied (a) eircom are obliged to contact me within 48 hours and resolve the issue within 10 days and (b) if I've not heard from 'em tomorrow to call her on her direct dial. Yay!

Well, I've signed up for Esat's flat-rate access package, despite their rather odious privacy policy. I am, of course, fully expecting another customer service disaster.

Evidently I need to stop dealing with telcos. This is the final paragraph from a lengthy and exasperated email to my domain registrar (currently Esat BT, although they've had several name changes since I first signed up with them) after they'd been sending me screwed up bills several years in a row:

Finally, I'd also appreciate if you could explain how my address changed from Cabinteely (correct at the time of last billing, but no longer so) to Youghal (my parents address, but not somewhere I've lived for some 12 years now). My current address for correspondance, billing, and explanations of same is [redacted]. If you wish to discuss these intriguing issues with me by phone, you may do so on [redacted] - a number which probably went missing with my Cabinteely address.

For the record, they did ultimately sort out the billing issue and explain it, kinda, but they had no light to shed on what the hell happened with my address.