Technology Battles

I was torn between writing about my battles with my new phone and new provider or my battles with my youngest son. I chose the new phone because it won’t read this blog!


So last week our new mobile phones arrived in the mail. Note to self – we still have to fill out the warranty cards. I had been cajoled into buying a new phone by my youngest son who wanted to get one as well. Actually, he didn’t have to cajole me that much as my old phone was reaching the end of its productive life and had begun to turn itself off. We had also both decided to change providers, so we obediently went to the suggested website and chose the phones we wanted.

It took me a little while to navigate around my new phone and I admit I’m still navigating and often getting lost in the various settings. Most importantly I have learnt how to answer a call, make a call, send a message and read a message. I even taught myself how to download my own ringtones as the manual was totally useless. I still have to work out how to assign my own tone to message notifications – no matter how many times I select the music I want, the phone insists on using its own notification tone. How on earth did I manage to attract a stubborn phone?

I did have to call a friend of mine a couple of times in order to find some solutions. She has the same phone and gave me some helpful hints, especially about setting up calendar. Nowhere in the manual did it say you had to sync one of your email addresses to the calendar in order to set it up, but apparently that’s what you have to do. And here is where the fun begins.

At the end of last week I transferred my phone to a new provider whose rates look pretty good. There are no contracts so if I don’t like them I can transfer to another provider. My son also transferred a few days before I did. He got the extra $5 credit they were offering for transfers before 31 Jan, I didn’t. He got emailed instructions of how to connect to the internet etc, and I didn’t. It didn’t worry me at the time and yesterday morning I rang them to ask about the $5 of credit and they added it to my account without any problem.

Yesterday afternoon I tried to add a new event to my calendar but couldn’t. The phone asked me to log into my email account and then told me my password was wrong – it wasn’t. It then told me it couldn’t sync to my email so I couldn’t use my calendar. I should explain that I use my phone calendar on a daily basis. It reminds me when to pay my rent, when to take my son to the physio and who is having a birthday. It is my memory and I feel very vulnerable without it.

So I went on the internet to find solutions but there was nothing. After three hours of googling and fiddling and calling my friend again and getting frustrated I gave up and called my new phone provider. Apparently I should have received an email giving me instructions of how to access the internet. Sam, the very nice trouble-shooter from my new provider endlessly tried to sort out my problem over the phone to no avail. After a long time talking to Sam –far longer than I have talked to any of my boys over the past week – he told me he would call this morning and see if he could sort it out.

Sam called this morning while I was on the exercise bike. I hope my puffing and panting didn’t put him off. Apparently he had sent me some text messages which I hadn’t received. After a brief conversation he hung up promising to talk to his supervisor and get back to me. We are obviously building up some sort of friendship here!

So I sit and wait for Sam to get back to me with a solution. Until then I’m in the dark about what is going to happen this week as all my notes are locked away in my phone’s calendar. So much for technology!