Yes, I got a new phone. The old one was going wrong after many years of faithful service so I contacted Tesco, asked about a free upgrade and spent forty minutes on the phone typing a conversation that would have been a lot easier, and quicker, if we’d spoken. Having badly underestimated the time needed to do this I had to hand the conversation over to Julia because I was due at the doctor. Having allowed 15-20 minutes, I ws surprised it took over 40 minutes just to arrange an upgrade.
It arrived a day later, which was brilliant service. I opened it, and that was where everything went wrong.
Bee on Red Valerian
I couldn’t get the card out of my old phone. I couldn’t find any way to get the back off so I resorted to the internet. There were several You Tube videos about it, but none of them were quite right. Finally I found a video from seven years ago and that told me. It involves a great deal of brute force. And that was just the start . . .
My phone seems to have gone wrong because the maker withdrew support from it, which explains my trouble with texts. On a planet full of electronic waste, they are selling phones and then deciding when it will become obsolete . Without the intervention of Motorola, it would have lasted for years..
Then I found I needed to be linked to the internet to do anything, and needed a Google account and a Microsoft subscription.
Marmalade Hoverfly
It’s like a tightening net. You pay for a phone, but someone else switches it off. You just want to make calls but you have to sell your soul to corporate America and tether your life to the Internet by a data umbilical. So far I have resisted but it comes at a cost of multiple messages about finishing setting the phone up. I’m also having to enter all my phone numbers manually. I am not going to live my life as an appendage of the internet just because everyone else does. One day I’m sure I’ll wake up and find that most of the rest of the world has been taken over by zombified users of so-called smart phones.
Julia, Sutton-on-Sea
And just about finally, I rang Julia this afternoon. I didn’t get hr but a message came up on my phone screen about signing up for video calling. It must be the worse thing in the world. I don’t want people ringing and having a look at the clothes I wear when relaxing at home, or the woeful state of the housework. Anyway, I still hold my phone to the side of my head, all the caller will see is a section of moving beard. Or my ear. Neither is a great view.
My new phone case arrives tomorrow. I’ve been walking round all day with it wrapped in bubble wrap as it is big delicate screen. You never had any fear of breakage with a Nokia.
And did I mention it took me over 24 hours to even find the clock?
Pictures are selected because they cheer me up.
Seal at Donna Nook.
I have a Samsung Galaxy S9 but still have my old Motorola flipphone and WILL NOT give that up for anything. I can’t wait to go back to using that phone.
I know that feeling. Why can’t they just let us select the level we want. I’d go back to Nokia or Blackberry if I could. Nokia were solid and hard-wearing and Blackberry gave me just the technology I required at the time – all with proper buttons. 🙂
I went to the EE shop in Carlisle when I got a new phone for Mrs. We spoke to a real person and they did everything necessary to transfer her data to the new phone, set up a joint plan for her and me so only one payment was needed a month, and generally were helpful, understandable and cheerful. It was a most unusual experience. We left the shop with two working phones.
Last time I got a phone I was able to do it in TESCO whilst shopping, but I no longer go out. They weren’t too bad this time, to be fair, it’s just the way I was made to feel like a pawn in a corporate game of world domination.
EE are the ones that messed our payments up when we went to fibre broad band. Or BT did. They blamed each other. 🙁
It is harder if you are not going out, I can see that. It seems to be a matter of luck whether you get good service or not these days.
Yes. I keep saying I must get out more but laziness, inertia, fear, bad knees all gang up against me.
I find the photos cheery, too. Yes, I too, sadly identify with this post.
🙂
I hate that phones have become a necessary evil
Yes, hard to live without, but hard to live with some of the aspects of phone ownership. I don’t want to conform to a world where phone companies tell me how to live.
I so identify with this. I only replace mine when they die. I turn off WiFi.
🙂 This gives me hope. 🙂
I was told that new Android or apple phones are made to last 2 years only and I have been swopping phones every 2 years as they get wonky. I know your feeling but thankfully here in Singapore the telco does all the port over of data, files etc to new phone and I use cloud to back up. You will get used to it. Enjoy your new phone.
My troubles all began when Microsoft started stealing my work under the pretence of “helping” me. It isn’t helping me to spirit my stuff away to the cloud and lrave me to hunt for it. Grrr . . .
Always such a pain. If only phones lasted longer.
I see no reason why they can’t. Old phones, and the old codgers who use them, should be venerated, and respected for their long-lating resilience.
I got a new one a month ago. It was not a good idea. I believe every single thing you said. We are being taken for a ride by the big telcos – by the musks and becoses and that virgin bloke.
I’m sort of glad that you agree, because I feel less isolated, but sad that we have to put up with this, and the grinning billionaires.