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August 17, 2009
A complete phoney at last!
So, to cut a long story short, my wise daughter finally persuaded me to upgrade my mobile phone, and get onto a contract. 'There are some good deals around,' she said, and she was right. To someone like me, 'Pay as you go' is 'Save as you go.' That is, no contact with anyone unless absolutely essential - a model which is good for sanity, but not for business.
I'm scared though because I don't speak 'mobile'; not a word. So my daughter kindly agrees to come with me, to translate.
So early on sunny Saturday morning, we arrive in 'Chitter Chatter' to do business. And my first reaction is to feel very old. My last contact with people like this was when I did school assemblies. When I write my date of birth on a form, the young spike-haired assistant hollers 'My God!' before hastily adding, 'You don't look that old.' On the cusp of a sale, the vanity of the customer is a precious thing - even old customers.
But no one could hold back the laughter when I put my old phone/brick on the counter. They all fall about; like the aliens in the old 'Smash' advert. I get all the usual comments. 'Find it on a building site?' 'Last saw one like that holding up Stone Henge.' 'It's still got the cement on it' etc etc. I'm glad to be so entertaining.
And then as I attempt to set up the contract, it transpires that T Mobile don't trust my finacial trustworthines. I'm not considered a safe bet, and there's some embarrassing confusion and questioning until my sales assistant discovers I've never had a credit card, so have no credit history. 'That'll be it!' he says triumphantly. So I have to pay a £100 deposit, to be paid back later if I'm good. Because I've never been in debt, I'm soiled goods.
And then it gets worse, because my bank stop the payment of £100. 'Are you sure you've got £100 in your account?' asks the sales assistant. 'Yes, I've got quite a bit more than that, as it happens,' I say testily. I was struggling to remember what I came here for, and thinking that whatever it was, it wasn't worth it. Eternity was flying by. Twenty minutes later, and after various calls to the bank and lots of 'If you'd just like to hold', and really rubbish music, I discovered the bank were just being kind. They'd seen an abnormal transaction and blocked it. 'You don't usually do this sort of thing,' said the nice lady. And I was beginning to see why...
But you know, when all's said and done, I'm walking out with a phone about a tenth of the weight of my last one, with a £15 a month contract which gives me untold free phone minutes and unlimited texts. So I'm the laughing boy.
All I need now are some friends to contact. I'd been rather hoping that was part of the deal...
Posted by Mr Bojangles at August 17, 2009 01:49 PM