Goin’ Mobile
Less than a year after my belated conversion to mobile-phone-dom, I’m reminded why mobile phone companies are teh suck. I figured it would be useful to take my phone to Australia to swap onto a pay-as-you-go SIM there, but of course it’s network locked, and it’s one of those Siemens models you can’t unlock with a handy code from one of the free sites; you have to spend fifteen quid on software and a cable instead.
I tried a phone repair shop and they said they couldn’t unlock this model, and didn’t know of any way how to. So I tried ringing O2 for their own secret code. They said they couldn’t provide it for another month, because it wasn’t a year since I bought it. That’s no use to me—I’ll be home by then. Couldn’t they possibly just give it to me a few weeks early, given that I won’t even be in the UK during those weeks? No, sorry; try looking up the code on the web. (I promptly resolved to get the code off them next month anyway, and switch networks. That’ll learn ’em.)
This morning, though, another phone repair shop was able to unlock it on the spot for the same price as the cable. Ha! In your face, O2! Now I can gallavant off to the other side of the world to the Elysian fields of.... Telstra. Bugger.
Still, when it comes to cellular suckage, nothing can compare with Sprint. Over an hour on the phone to end my contract when I left San Francisco, never paying me the eighty bucks they owed me (even after all the penalties for leaving early), and three months later threatening to fine me for not paying that month’s rental on a cancelled line. Their name is clearly a warning, not a recommendation.
Wow, this is a really boring, ranty post, so let’s give it some added value by inviting comments with one of those warm and fuzzy community-building questions:
Don’t mobile phone companies suck?
7 November 2005
Ah, the memories. I got my first mobile in France, while living in a house with no landline. A year later, we had fun trying to get the unlocking codes out of Sagem France. They were perfectly pleasant, but kept saying things like "Of course, we'll need your INI number and your APIS code" (but in French). Eh?
A few months later I dropped the thing six inches onto a stone floor, and killed half of the LCD screen.
Added by Kirsten on 8 November 2005.
Those unlocking sites have particularly harsh things to say about Sagems.
I forgot to mention my favourite phone, the one we borrowed off my brother-in-law during our time in Melbourne. An early ’90s model, which by 2001 looked ridiculous. Quite fun chatting away on that in public.
Added by Rory on 8 November 2005.