“SIM card Sir..?” WHAT…GiffGaff! No thanks… [nor should you]

How Simple Is This… 

Well… life rarely is. But the exercise of buying a new phone – a smartphone no less – can and did take on an awesome turn of events. In doing so exposed not only the minefield of choosing your SIM cards, but found a good ‘old fashioned’ commissioned based sales enterprise, in the process.

The phone itself is a story on its own which has done little to enthuse me, but it was necessity that required its purchase. A recent staycation of home hunting proved that.

Beginning there the whole sorry story started the weekend before the Bank Holiday just gone. On that particular Sunday and a day’s trawling the internet, I hastened upon the delightful Samsung Galaxy S III. This is an all-singing-dancing phone which is supposed to synchronise with your PC/laptop of choice.

Added to fact that it also came highly thought of by a very good Twitter friend and client Catherine, that’s @MummyLion to most of you,  AND that ASDA could do it for £285 – the job as they say was a good one.

At the same time I also ordered from her website the second part of this mystery tour into the unknown, THE SIM CARD!

The phone was expected to arrive within two days and the card within three. So lets pick up the trail when the phone arrived, as predicted two days later – and to be honest – so it should. Things then were on track to be fully operational before the Bank Holiday, which would be nice. However;

Enter the race for the SIM.

Important part this, as this is purely a matter of signal strength, it is therefore reasonable for me to stay with my existing supplier [O2] or at least one who piggy-backed their signal. Nor was I looking for special ‘bundles’ with unlimited data or the like, so Pay-&-Go would do me fine and I could transfer over the old number and contacts etc, you’ve no doubt been there and got the tee-shirt.

Not that cost really is the problem here, but there’s no sense in paying for stuff that you wont be using, so enter into the foray Messrs giffgaff. It uses O2 [more of which in a moment] all it need do was turn up a.s.a.p. I mean what could be simpler than for someone to post it 1st Class on Monday? For the record, both items were effectively ordered on the Monday a.m. before the last Bank Holiday.

At worst the card should arrive within three days as I would reasonably expect. 

Here’s the first rub. Anyone can go into the many suppliers/specialist shops or even Supermarkets and buy a SIM card – NO DELAY! Wazz it in and away you go. (Not however with giffgaff) After all they the suppliers are in direct competition with the High St, and as it turns out themselves. Both O2 and giffgaff are owned by Telefonica.

The second rub is, by now I was livid as a long-serving customer of O2/Telefonica and the card was still in transit. Put simply…NOT GOOD ENOUGH. So how’s this for customer support, if you have a problem you are told only to contact an agent and a reply is usual within 24hrs. NO TELEPHONE NUMBER AT ALL.

They have committed RETAIL SUICIDE OF THE FIRST ORDER. The onus therefore befalls to a poor agent to take the brunt and immense displeasure of the public, many of which are friends and family.

But there’s more, remember my ‘new’ phone!

The delay elsewhere had not stopped me from charging up the beast ready to swing into action, Oh no. What this fantastic piece of technology is supposed to do would be to synchronise to my laptop. Easier said than done, sync means connect something which seemed alien in/by definition.

Of course it would charge, but swap files..NO. Downloading the panacea of all software designed to do the job – Kies – proved a fruitless exercise. As did trying to register the product with the Mother company to effect the guarantee. Something even which defied the expertise of the in-house customer support. (take note giffgaff…they had a telephone support team!!)

Odd though I could register to the Samsung site but not the product to the site.

Nevertheless, I scoured as many forum sites as I could to find a resolve to the issue, seemingly everybody else is awaiting an update/patch in the software – but when?! So I have a phone not performing as it should which primarily is  the main reason it was purchased, nor do I have a SIM card to make any calls. Total outlay £295 and I am now spitting feathers! So how did I send a picture to Twitter on the Wednesday of that week – I hear you ask!!

Well I had organised a separate contract for my wifi which would also permit my using my laptop should ever the need arise, thus the nation and the Twitter world were able to delight in my culinary skills.

So, a quick summary.

Saturday: The SIM card arrives….actually thuds on the mat! The phone still has an independent viewpoint on connecting to my family group i.e. laptop. It has therefore forced my hand.

But nothing before today beats this. The bloody SIM card had a sting in its ‘tale’. Duly inserted, registered and validated by making the required payment [accounted for earlier] and ready t… NOOOO! Whatever they had sent didn’t register the new credit on it despite the now payment, meaning no calls, even dialling manually. Zero, sweet Fannie-Adams. It turns out that these cards come from Head Office, not via the agent link. And I’d have to wait 24hrs for a reply as to why..??!! (and should I want to reply to that….and so forth and so on).

And the conclusion.

Would you settle for a back-story to all this, for there is a humdinger just under the surface. It involves Tweets left right and definitely not centre. An opinion in which I believe I’ve found the nearest thing to a ‘Pyramid’ scheme you can get without calling it such.

All because a 21st Century company doesn’t want to have a telephone helpline. Such is all this I now call giffgaff […have you guessed?] ‘GaffGaff’. Translated…. A complete and utter shower!

I am afraid I’m to treat you all to a second instalment, the saga still continues. Unbelievable but true. Little did I know nor could imagine what basically is a simple thing to do, could be escalated into this barrage balloon.