Ok, first off, it’s been a good two or three weeks since any of us last posted.  Sorry about that guys, it’s just a case of us all being ridiculously busy with various things and not getting time for much else.

One thing I have been getting some time in on is Burnout Paradise which surprisingly for me, is keeping my interest much more than I thought it would. However, there is one problem.

Most of you have heard about, or at least experienced the search for the Orbs in Crackdown, right?  If you have the game, you’ll also remember the pain of looking for those last few which just didn’t seem to be anywhere.  Well that same pain is back, but this time in the form of Billboards, Super Jumps and Gates.

Right now I’ve got about 105 out of 120 Billborads, 42 out of 50 Jumps, and 389 of 400 Gates.  The first two won’t be so bad to find, but these gates are getting to be a real pain in the posterior.  In between unlocking the cars, completing the challenges, racing, and generally mucking about with Paul online, I’m constantly on the lookout for these Gates.

For those not aware, each gate is marked by chainlink fence with bright yellow markers and flashing lights.  Doesn’t sound hard to spot does it, but trying to find them whilst doing excess speed down the wrong side of a road is.  Driving slowly in Burnout just feels wrong as anyone who’s played any game from the series will know; sure it would make the job easier but it’s just no fun.  I can drive slowly in real life for god sake (kinda have to, damn speeding tickets!) so I’m not going to piddle about in a game.

Last night I even considered looking for a map online of where they all were.  Apart from the basic wrong-ness of doing so, I suddenly remembered the people I used to deal with whilst presenting Game Guru, and realised just what depths I would be sinking to.

Oh, and one last quick note, an apology to ‘oss’ who dropped a few comments on Paul’s O2 posts.  We all missed out on your comments, but they are approved now and showing.  Nothing personal, jut none of us had logged into the admin panel until I did this morning.  Hopefully you’ve got your charges sorted out too by now, but let us know what happened.  Be interesting to see what steps O2 take for you as well!

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!