Day 244 - Game of Phones

call me (probably won't answer)

I've been having a bit of a game with my phone lately, and whilst trying to find one that might work, I came across this little lot.

After suffering years of abuse and mistreatment by Orange (18 years and 8 months, to be precise), my patience eventually ran out and I decided to jump ship. 

There are no phones available that are even remotely good enough to tempt me to spend £500 on them, so I'm going SIM-only for a while and sticking with my faithful Galaxy S3.

That means I can go to any other network and just pay a small monthly charge for data and calls, right?

Wrong!

The first place I went, Virgin Mobile, refused me credit!!  This forced me to go the credit agency, where I had to sign my life away in order to be told that my credit record is perfect.

WTF Virgin Mobile?!

It was for a £10 per month deal, and I'd given them my card details to pay the £10 - and they refuse me based on a perfect credit record?!

Well, that's them out of the picture for good.

Fortunately, 3 agreed to do me the great honour of allowing me to pay them to use their network, so I got my PAC code and asked to transfer my number.  

Turns out my phone is locked to Orange, so I hunted around for a free unlocking hack...but it turns out that because I upgraded to Android 4.3, the hacks no longer work...which means I now have to pay Orange £20 for the luxury of using the phone (which I own!) on another network...  

...and it'll take them 10 days to get the number to me...

...and now my number has swapped to 3...

...so I can't use my phone on Orange because they've now cancelled my account...

...and I can't use it on 3 because the phone is locked to Orange...

...and I can't use any of these other phones that were knocking about, because the new SIM is a different format...

Brilliant!

To be fair, though, these aren't all my phones...one is the house phone, two are Anna's, one is my work phone, one is another work phone I borrowed to temporarily resolve the problem.

So, erm, yeah, there are three Samsung Galaxy S3's there, and all are (sort of) mine...

But, you know, I do sometimes make as many as two or three calls per month, so I need extensive telephony solutions...obviously!

Moving on...in other (great) news, things are improving for my nephew Chris (or Bird as he's sometimes known)...

behind you!

Either that, or the Zombie Apocalypse has begun, and my bro' is in serious trouble! 

I'm not sure why everyone calls him Birdie...I'm not even sure why I've changed that over the last couple of years to BirdDog...

But I know there's only one name he's going to go by from now on...

BirdZombie!

;-)