Yes, another rant.

I signed up to phone insurance last year when I bought my phone via The Carphone Warehouse. The cost was £30 for three months of insurance - a bit steep but it was my first contract phone and I was worried what might happen if I lost it. The commencement date was the 9th of August 2005 and I would be billed by Direct Debit quarterly.

A year later and my phone contract was up. Being relatively okay with paperwork I remembered to phone the insurance company on the 8th of August 2006 to cancel my insurance which they did. While I was on the phone I asked them to confirm they wouldn’t be taking a fifth quarterly payment (£30) as I’d only had the insurance for the one year. They told me that I’d paid £30 by direct debit just a week before on the 1st of August 2006 and so I asked them to refund it. I was told they would notify the credits department.

A month later and no credit has appeared on my bank account. I phoned them back to be told I never applied for a credit and that they probably wouldn’t be able to refund me. The man on the phone kept asking me about when I cancelled the phone contract even though I told him that it wasn’t relevant to my insurance problem. He also told me about my Direct Debit days being on the first day of the quarter. I told him that this wasn’t relevant either. And looking at my insurance confirmation it says that the Direct Debits would be taken “every three months commencing 9/11/05″.

I wanted 4 quarters of insurance, I HAD 4 quarters of insurance and yet you’ve taken 5 quarters out my bank. I have all the terms & conditions here and there is absolutely nothing about this. Just the fact that I want to pay quarterly. He had no answer. But would send the request to his line manager.

Today I got a response from an ‘administration team leader’ telling me that my ‘refund request’ has been unsuccessful. Ha! What a con. I didn’t really see it as a ‘request’, more of a ‘please pay me back my money you took from my account’ for services I never asked for. Apparently I can ‘appeal’!!! Well they’ll get their appeal alright the Shysters. Check the ‘comments’ out below later for my reply.

Well ‘3′ have so far handled my cancellation really well. If it wasn’t for the offshore call centres I’d still be with them as the prices and coverage are second to none. I just got annoyed when the customer service information was different than that on the website, and when they put me on my old tariff when I thought I was moving to a much better one. But since I’ve cancelled they’ve done everything they said they would very efficiently. It’s just a shame that 2 out of 3 customer service representatives are useless.

Now I think I’m an official Orange member. But I’m so sure as I’ve followed all the instructions that came with my new phone but I can’t seem to use it. I accepted the text message that was meant to update my SIM but that is not enough to let me make any calls. If I phone the Orange 980 number as written in the manual a voice tells me, “Calls from this number are barred”. If I phone Orange using my ‘3′ phone then I get told there is a 46 minute waiting time, and they don’t tell you if the call is costing me any money. That just isn’t good enough.

My new Nokia N90 from Orange has the ugliest looking interface. It’s amazing how much different the N90 from ‘3′ looked. The Orange manual is awful too. I’m kind of wishing I stayed with ‘3′ now. Maybe I’ll move back after 18 months, if they’re still around. I’m sure there’ll be a few more updates in this post during today. Will I ever be able to register my phone, switch my phone number across from 3 or get my Broadband for free as promissed?

Update: Was waiting on phone for 9 minutes and no customer services at all. Just a message telling me that they were receiving a large amount of calls. I still have 14 days to go back to ‘3′, I may just do it.

Update: Still not registered. I tried 4 more times yesterday and twice last night. They’re still too busy. This morning I’m trying again and I’ve currently been on hold for 1 hour and 26 minutes, I wonder if I’ll break the two hour mark? And I’m not sure if the money-back guarantee refers to my contract or just the phone. I’ll be moving off Orange if they continue this.

Update: After 2 hours on hold the call was disconnected by Orange. Apparently there is a huge Orange problem at the moment as the whole network went AWOL yesterday.

Update: All sorted. This time I had a wait of 40 minutes but the guy, his first day on the job, managed to register my phone and hopefully transfer my phone number over sometime next week. He was a helpfull guy and I hope he does well there. My annoyance levels have reduced sharply.

It seems that my negotiations over my new phone were not as done and dusted as I believed. I received a letter today telling me my new handset was on the way (6 days after it arrived) and that I had upgraded to the TALK AND TEXT 600 package, the same one I had been on before. I had previously agreed with the woman from ‘3′ (all customer services are based in Indian call centres) that I was to move to the DIRECT TEXT 1400 package with the 30Mb of free Yahoo Internet but alas I had not been moved. They also had never heard of the Internet Powered by Yahoo, free 30Mb/month, service that I wanted.

So I decided to cancel my ‘3′ account and phone. Whether this process will be easy is anybody’s guess but if I do get any problems I’ll tell you about them here. My two main worries are 1. How easy will it be to transfer my telephone number, and 2. How much will ‘3′ charge me after I cancel?

So I’m about to move to Orange. This way I get my £17.99 Broadband Internet for free. Well thats what they tell me anyway. Lets see what I can get…

Update: Now the Carphone Warehouse are in my bad books as they seemed to have billed me for 3 months insurance before my 12 months was up. They’ve tried to get in a few days early without my concent. Anyway, just noting that my insurance with Carphone Warehouse Lifeline was cancelled today at 10:15 in case they pretend I didn’t do it.

Update: It’s unlucky for ‘3′ that by the time I finally get hold of a decent call centre operative it’s when I’m getting my PAC code to transfer my number. He explained all my options and answered all my questions perfectly. It almost wanted me to stay with ‘3′ after all.

My new Nokia N70 is pretty much the same as my old Nokia 6630. It’s about twice as fast and better looking but it has the same Operating System and screen size. It does have a camera which is twice the resolution - keeping me from buying a new digital camera for the time being.

But of course we all know that a 2 megapixel camera isn’t twice as good as a 1 megapixel camera. It’s only 1.414 times better, the square root of 2, I think.

It’s that time again, my mobile phone contract renewal. This time my lengthy negotiations with 3 and the Carphone Warehouse resulted in me deciding to get a Nokia N70. It’s on an 18 month contract unfortunatly but 3 aren’t giving their contracts away almost free like they did last year so it’s the best I could get. The tariff is the Direct Text 1400 which gives you 300 minutes and 1000 texts a month. It normally retails for £30 a month but I managed to wangle a £230 rebate so it’ll balance out at £17 a month in total. Not brilliant but not bad.

And here’s a picture of my new phone:

Let’s hope its good.

Here’s a list of a whole bunch of mobile phone software and forum links - so I dont lose them.

3G Forum

Tips for 6630

OggPlayer

Symbian Freeware

So I have my new phone now, and its great! The coverage of 3 in my area is fine and I’ve only dropped the signal once, where my previous Orange phone didn’t work either.

So far I’ve uploaded a screensaver, Bust-A-Move, Yahtzee, Minesweeper, mp3s, movies and some file utilities. I can now convert any movie formats to the 3gp format the phone uses.

I’ll be adding a utitity called OggPlayer which will plays music in the ogg format, which is half the size of an mp3.

I’ve also downloaded a game called The Journey II which apparently needs you to leave the house to play it, I’ll explain more if I get it to work.

Finally, I need some help choosing my ringtone. Here are a few I’ve made from tracks off CDs. What one should I use?

Presence - Favour Nothing
Krome and Time - Sounds of the Underground
John Arnold - Respectall
Oliver Ho - Sacred Object

Let me know by clicking on the comments link just below this post. And just right click and ‘Save As’ if you want to use it for your own phone.