Back-story since my last post; Still no word about this network investingation. I was told I would get a call back on Monday afternoon. Guess what? I never got it! What a shocker!

So when I got home from work, I had a very long phone call with a woman called Dawn at o2, went through the whole story again and told her that my direct debit has been cancelled and I’ll be cancelling the contract, with no charges to me etc etc. Something surprised my though during this phone call. Dawn was actually a very nice person, was very understanding and in an even bigger shocker, she was helpful too! So much so that she also gave me a solution to the problem!

She basically said that o2 would drag this out for weeks and weeks before the issue would be sorted. All that the network investigation would confirm is the amount of data that was downloaded, and that I would have to send my phone off to them for a thourough check-up. If there was nothing wrong with the phone, then I would have no choice but to pay the £1,000 bill and be well and truly stuffed up the shitter.

Dawn then pointed out that the best thing to do would be to put a charge on my acount of around £30 which gives me a download limit of 30gb for GPRS usage. This would be a one-off charge that she would back-date to before the downloads started. This will then credit the grand showing on my account and all will be sorted.
All she needed to do was get the department head to approve it.
5 minutes of being on hold and she returns.

The plan has been approved! She fills in the form while I’m on the phone to her and she also emails me a confirmation that she has sent the form to the powers that be. In a few days, I should see a credit on my account. I thanked Dawn so much, I actually threatened to find out where she worked and give her a big sloppy kiss!

There’s a lesson here kids. If you have a problem with something, don’t go in all guns blazing. Be polite, don;t get stroppy and if you do manage to let a few swear words slip through (like I did!) then apologise for it! You’ll find things get done easier and quicker that way!

Moving on, yesterday I logged into the o2 website and checked the “recent charges” part and there we have it! The credit has been applied! I am now a happy chappie! So when the bill arrives from o2, I’ll take it to the store, pay it, and get the direct debit re-instated. But take note, when the contract is up, it will be cancelled and I’ll be onto pay as you go. No more all-singing-all-dancing phones.

For now anyway…

Or am I about to get rodgered up the shitter by o2? I dunno.

Following on from this post about my GPRS charges last week, I decided to give them a call on Monday to see how things were going on the report that they had raised on the usage. No news yet. Still takes about a week to sort out. Or so they say. So I gave them a couple more days to get on with it.

I call them this morning, and I get a miserable woman called Rosie at their end. SO I explained what I’m chasing up, and guess what? Still no news! But she did send an email to the technical chappie to give me a call and let me know where he’s up to. That was about 9:15 this morning. It’s now 10:35 and still no call from him. I have a feeling that this is going to go on for ages.

I’ll give them until tomorrow, then I’m going to call them up again. If I still don;t get anymore news from them, I’m going to cancel the direct debit I have, and then I’m sure that they’ll

A/ Give me the answers that I want
or
B/ Send me to court for non-payment of £1,019.40

I also got an email from BT the other day saying that I went 15gb over my monthly usage. But being that they’re so kind, they wont charge me on this occasion. But next time they’ll charge me 30p per gb over the norm. That’ll teach me for downloading demos, games and movies from Xbox Live!

So far, technology-wise, and a few personal bits, 2008 has been a bit shit. I’m hoping that it can only get better, but that would be tempting fate, wouldn’t it…

You may now officially stick your phone and your contract and especially, your GPRS charges up your shitter.

Lots of love

Paul Sunter

Sorry, you’ll want a story to go with this won’t you! Well here goes…

Yesterday while sitting at my desk, doing the usual worky stuff (browsing the internet) I received a text message from o2. “You have gone over your normal monthly charge by £233″. W…T…F I exclaimed in quite a load manner, as you’d imagine. Obviously a phone call to o2 had to be made.

“Well sir, it turns out that on the 30th December, you downloaded 92mb worth of data on your mobile phone”. OK. This doesn’t make sense. The last time GPRS was used was on the 20th December when we had a power cut at work, and the phone was definatly not used on the 30th December. After asking what was downloaded…”we don’t know sir. We don’t have that information to hand” Helpful. Is there any way I can see what has been downloaded on my phone from here? “No sir. I don’t think anyone here knows how to use an XDA Orbit. Best you go to your nearest o2 store and ask them”. Oh for fucks sake.

Here’s a hint. o2 Customer service are about as useful as a chocolate frying pan. Don’t bother even thinking about ringing them.
So off I trot to the o2 store in Blackburn. Luckily, they were a lot more helpful than the *insert foreign country* person that I spoke to on the phone yesterday. They were very helpful infact. Umm, too helpful possibly.

“Umm, sir, your phone has now downloaded over 350mb of data and your bill is now currently over 1,000 pounds”. If you’re under 18, I would look away now. Actually, and surprisingly, I was quite calm about the situation! It was a funny reaction when I told Gem, when she’d trotted back from browsing in Next. Now I would deffinatly look away if you’re under 18…

FUCK OFF she shouted quite loudly! It was quite an amusing moment!

It turns out that my phone has been (apparently) downloading data without my knowlege. The bloke in the store had a root through my phone to see if anything was stored. It’d have a job though considering there isn’y even enough space to store 100mb, let alone 300mb! It “may” be a fault with the phone. If so, I won’t have to pay the bill. If it isn’t the phone though, I really can’t be paying over a grand for something that I have’t done!

A report is currently being done at o2 to see exactly what’s happening, but that’s going to take around 5 days. Cue much ringing of said company and chasing up!

Updates on this subject will be forthcoming!

After about two weeks worth of searching and comparing specs and prices, I actually took the plunge and have now ordered my brand new gaming TV.  And the winner is…

*drum roll*

The LG 26LC46!!

In the end it became a very close toss up between this LG and a 32″ in a different range.  Although two things made the decision for me:

1. As much as I would have liked a 32″ screen for my 360, it would have completely dominated the room to ridiculous proportions.  The 360 is set up in a spare bedroom which is kind of our office/gaming room, rather than in the front room.  26″ fits in just nicely.
2. Buying the 26″ meant I didn’t have to use finance or credit cards, just!

So where did I buy it from? Believe it or not, dixons.co.uk!  Although they don’t have any high street stores, they are still an online presence and weirdly they seem be able to beat Comet, Currys and PC World for online prices.  Seeing as they are in the same group, it makes me wonder quite how they agree their pricing structures.  However I don’t care too much, as I managed to get the TV for about £80 to £100 cheaper than anywhere else!

Although this was 4th time lucky to try and get one, as the three TV’s I’d previously found at the cheapest price all went out of stock the day I decided to buy them.  I was beginning to think someone was trying to tell me something, but having spent so long investigating I had to actually get one.

Hopefully the newbie will be here by Friday, although I’m not holding my breath as with it being Christmas the delivery networks will be rammed to capacity. I’ll give the TV the GBS review treatment when it’s arrived and I’ve had a good chance to play around with it.

Oh yeah, this does also mean that the Samsung D900i mobile phone I wanted to get is officially out of the window for the next few months.

I’ve got a few minutes spare I thought it only fair to post a little update on here.

So what have I been up to, aside from looking after our gorgeous baby boy?

Gaming wise, I am absolutely loving Super Mario Galaxy on Wii.  There aren’t many times that I find a game lives up to the hype, but this one does.  I’ve been looking forward to it since it was announced prior to the machine’s launch, and I have not been disappointed.

Mario Sunshine was somewhat a marmite game for a lot of people, but I loved it.  My fear was that Galaxy would go the same way, but Miyamoto and his team have hit the nail on the head. This latest installment of Mario has just become the main reason to own a Nintendo Wii.  Then again, if you couldn’t say that about a Mario game on a Ninty console, there would be something seriously wrong!

Admittedly the whole 3D gravity thing is a bit of a head masher to understand, leaving you floundering with the controls, but that is soon overcome after the first few minutes.  That is it’s quickly overcome if you’re playing, as anybody watching can end up quite queasy.  If you suffer from motion sickness then definitely do not watch somebody playing this!

Aside from an occasionally awkward camera positioning, there really isn’t anything I can complain about with it, and would heartily recommend a purchase for any Wii owner.  If you haven’t got a Wii, then go get one damn it.  That is if you can find one during these ’surprising’ shortages.

On a tangent, I’m also looking for a new mobile phone, and gaming TV for my 360.  Too early to know which phone I want as I only started looking yesterday, but as for the TV.

I currently use a 19″ widescreen Samsung TV/Monitor hybrid but want to upgrade to 26″ of widescreen HD lubness.  I’m working through some suggestions from a few of the rather lovely chaps over at Consoles & Conkers, so as and when I have a decision I’ll post up what I get.  Now then, where’s my tape measure to find out if that 32″ one I saw will fit?

I’ve spent the past two days trying to set up two BlackBerry 8820 devices. We’ve (as in work) have previously used the “Push” method of Exchange and Activesync running on WM5 devices. However, this is unreliable, slightly unconfigurable, requires a hole in the firewall and costs money on data transfer. That, and the WM5 OS does suffer from frequent glitches, crashes - my Exec doesn’t like answering or making calls for example - so we decided it was time to look around.

Hence the blackberries. Anyhow, back to the main thrust of this story, spending two days getting them set up. First off the boxes and associated docs had no mention of software to install for an enterprise solution!!! The BB ethos is surely via Exchange or other EMS and onto the users BB seamlessly - you want me to connect it via desktop cable?

Thankfully I like to think that I know what I’m doing so a bit of reading and research later I found my answers and had a fresh copy of Blackberry Enterprise Server Express Edition installed and set up (Easy install when you know what you’re doing.) Next up was the phones…. and a certain mobile provider.

But first, a bit of back-story. (names changes to protect the hard working) We’d sourced the phones we wanted, found the provider and placed the order. Now the phones we wanted were still being tested (fairly new kit and we’re first adopters - Xbox 360 anyone?) so we had to wait a while. When they were released we waited for next day delivery…. it didn’t come. A quick phone call and an apology. Next day… they didn’t come. Four days later we get to the bottom of it - apparently 72 other clients are also waiting for their phones, something to do with the supplier not being ready to ship something they don’t have listed as a product. Next day… they arrived! Yippee. End of back story.

So, the server install - very simple really. Within no time the Blackberry server software was talking to the Exchange server without problems. The phones were a different story… and I’ll explain those in part two!

After nearly a week of waiting, phoning, chasing, hoping and above all - shouting - it seems as though my new phone is on its way… and yes, it’s function over factor.

The new Blackberry 8820 is designed and destined to replace my XDA Exec. Using the blackberry software it will sync straight my with Exchange server. Hopefully the phone will be a little more reliable than the Exec which seems to have problems taking and making calls. (Strange with it being a phone!)

One of the beautiful things about this phone is that it comes with a fully functional GPS built in. This means I can go GeoCaching with just the phone. No need for printouts and locations, Garmin GPS and batteries. I just go with one device.

On another completely seperate topic I note that things over here on GBS have been a little slow recently. Well the summer is coming to an end and there is so much to catch up on. I’ve done quite a lot over the summer and I need to update you all on what’s going on!

Tech-wise I’m still using Vista - haven’t come across all the problems people say it has. I haven’t for one second considered loading XP back on the laptop. On the 360 I’m still playing GoW a lot, but I’m also on GH2 as well. Bioshock is a game I keep playing, and that’s just the demo. Thankfully it’s my 31st birthday tomorrow so I’m hoping for a small DVD sized case!

There is so much to say, but for now this is it. When I get a chance to post more I will.