Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 16, 2007 in
General I like Orange. I’ve been with them for a long time. Whenever I upgrade they are very competitive. However just before I got my N95 they cancelled all their data plans, and caused me to write this blog post.
I called Orange back yesterday and spoke to someone who was very pleasant, but not able to help (and by the way the ability to simply select an option for “I want to talk to a person” is still making me smile, it’s so rare these days). He did however offer to get a manager to call me back. After about 20 minutes of no call I thought it would turn out as it does when British Gas promise the same thing.
However, I did receive a call. I spoke to a very switched on chap called Jan. I would say that Orange should give him a promotion but I worry about taking good people out of the front lines when customers are calling needing to get stuff done. We chatted for a long time and he was very open to my point that Orange calling a 30mb capped package unlimited
was very out of sync with the market. The rest of the market refers to unlimited as a 1gb cap.
Part of the problem is that Orange don’t give customers a way to realisticly experience data. They have a “3G trial” package which you get for a couple of months when you switch to a 3G phone. During the trial you get a 1gb a month of data for 3G stuff. Then if you don’t cancel you get automatically moved to a 4mb plan. It’s absolutely insane, talk about disparity. It makes Orange seem like a drug dealer, getting you hooked on unrealistically cheap and plentiful data and then charging you through the nose when it’s too late to back out. After a little discussion he offered to wipe any additional data charges from my account for a month, so I could find out if I really needed a gb. That’s pretty good customer service.
He promised to investigate and feed my concerns up. It’s simple really, I want to use data. I’m a geek I will happily use lots and lots of data, but I want to pay Orange a competitive price for it. The best deal he could find was 500mb/mo of GPRS for something like £50. I don’t want GPRS hell no, I want 1gb of 3.5G data for something which competes with T-Mobile’s web ‘n’ walk. I really hope Jan gets back to me.
Technorati Tags:
orange, data, dataplan, carriers, tmobile, 3g, n95, customerservice
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Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 15, 2007 in
General Even the setting up was fun. God knows what a riot the rest will be.
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hackdaylondon, hackday, yahoo, bbc, pillowfight
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 14, 2007 in
Blogging Recently I’ve noticed a couple of post by friends of mine which have been really good pithy bits of advice. In particular Marco on Javascript and Ed Eliot on conditional Adsense. However, what struck me with these is I was either there when the topic was being discussed or has blogged about it previously.
I’m glad they have written some good posts and competing is not my intention. but it makes me feel like I need to blog like I GTD and do some instant two minute (well five minute) on-the-spot posts. As soon as something turns into a project it gets stuck on the backlog.
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blogging, blogs
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 13, 2007 in
General My wife got some great green advice while out shopping today. One of the pamphlets (now in our recycling bin) pointed us to MPS Online. This is a free service which is similar to the Green Dimes service Nate blogged about. It’s a free service in the UK that allows you to opt out of junk mail. You can also choose from a variety of reasons while doing it to feed back your thoughts why junk mail sucks.
Surprisingly you can even use it to notify advertisers and other companies that someone has moved out of your current address. We are constantly marking mail as ‘not at this address’ and putting it back in the post box but it never seems to do much good.
Technorati Tags:
green, recycling, junkmail, natekoechley, mpsonline
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 12, 2007 in
London Events So there was a geek dinner tonight with Jyri from Jaiku. I have to say it was a very different crowd from normal, if there is such a thing for geek dinners. Maybe it’s just regulars plus transients interested in the speaker.
Anyway Jyri is a great speaker, very smart and funny. His thoughts on Web 2.0 were fascinating. Hey talks about how community web sites are built around something. A lot of people talk about connecting users, Jyri talks about connecting users through something. He gave examples, mySpace has music, LinkedIn has jobs, Flickr has photos, YouTube has videos, &c. It’s a very important concept I think.
Jason Calacanis showed his insight and asked what the object was with “tweets” or “jaiks” (is that the right verbification I wonder). This sparked a discussion with the audience. Someone noted (Tom Morris I think) that both services are used like the early days of blogging before the advent of blog articles. I found that very interesting, it’s almost as if these micro messages are back to basics.
I really recommend seeing Jyri speak if you ever get a chance. He’s a really nice guy and very approachable to chat to as well. There were a couple of people recording/podcasting and I look forward to seeing those when they come out. I’ll also link them here.
Technorati Tags:
web20, jyriengestrom, jyri, jaiku, twitter, jasoncalacanis, tommorris, londonevents, geekdinner, londongeekdinner
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 11, 2007 in
Mac,
Symbian S60 Some of the features of Leopard look cool. However, having just digested a skin-full of WWDC posts I’m just kinda meh
. While there is some interesting stuff mentioned on Lifehacker, The Unofficial Apple Weblog and others, I still find one thing more exciting than anything. A new version of Quicksilver. That’s right a 3rd party app. I’m sure I’ll love Leopard once I use it, but Quicksilver is the one thing that stands out in my mind as something I crave and update to.
It’s interesting that there is now a new version of Safari. It works on Windows and Macs. I’m just going to stick with Webkit nightlys thanks. It’s also amusing that the iPhone API is nothing more than Safari. I now have a Python interface to my GPS on my Nokia. I don’t give a crap about web apps when I could be building things on this platform to go with my 5 megapixel camera and my 3.5G data connectivity. I still prefer my N95
.
Update: Best commentary on Safari on Windows yet, my friend Pete the artist – I’m, like, all confused. It’s like finding my ladyboy lover in bed with a giraffe.
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Productivity, apple, quicksilver, webkit, iphone, nokia, n95, s60, pys60, symbian, safari
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 11, 2007 in
General Christian made some excellent points about not corporate bashing. It made me think of when Molly announced she was working with the Internet Explorer team. Half the comments were bad mouthing the product not congratulating her and them on taking a step forward. It says to me that Web Development still isn’t a profession. It certainly isn’t always filled with professionals.
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IE, Web Development, standards, wasp, christianheilmann
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 10, 2007 in
General I’ve been having a productive weekend and clearing out all the “to read” chaff in my feed reader. Rather than writing an actual post today I thought I’d highlight my link blog which almost always includes commentary. Lots on there at the moment because of the clean-up.
You can subscribe to my link blog via RSS or visit my page on del.icio.us
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delicious, linkblog
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 9, 2007 in
General Sometimes I get really sick of Orange. I’ve been with them a long time. There are some things I really like, such as their phone insurance which is the best in the industry. However, they’re pricing plans are really getting me down again.
When I upgraded to my Nokia N95 I asked them about data plans. Apparently they had just canned them all. They weren’t selling any more data cards, and the data bundles were laughably uncompetitive 4mb for £4. Obviously I wasn’t pleased and in order to make me stay from going to T-Mobile the guy gave me a competitive offer. I got more minutes and texts than I am ever going to use, but he did knock some money off my plan.
Then I saw this article in The Register on how Orange simplifies data charging. According to them Orange were providing an unlimited
£5 evening and weekend bundle and an £8 anytime one for monthly subscribers. Not bad, thought I. However, when I called Orange to inquire the lovely lady I spoke to had not heard of either and said they hadn’t been trained on them yet. That’s something I’ve heard of a lot with Orange staff, the web knows information about Orange plans before they do.
After some chatting she couldn’t find these plans and suggested at 30mb for £8 bundle instead. It’s a slight extra cost for me but not much since I bartered during my upgrade and already had some. I figure I’m going to call back later and find someone else to ask. But, I thought I would also look on the web site. After much Googling I found a big nothing. I literally could not find any reference to data plans on the whole site, including the one I am actually on! The only thing I could find was in an obscure terms and conditions page Google trawled up. It stated that Orange gave a free 2 month 3G trial to people new to 3G. They got 1gb a month of data, which sounds great. Until you read further and see that they get forced onto the 4mb for £4 package as soon as the trial ends.
How can Orange be so reticent that they think it’s acceptable to not only have no sensible data plans but also to give a ‘trial’ package that is grossly misleading. If you really wanted to use 1gb of data a month on orange it would cost you hundreds of £s a month.
The only good thing Orange did for me today? They’ve improved their phone system. The main menu now has 4 options, one of which is to talk to a person. At least they get the voice bit of the their business right.
Technorati Tags:
orange, 3g, data, dataplan, bundle, phonetariff
Posted by sh1mmer on Jun 8, 2007 in
Games We’ve been playing a lot of Wee Wars at work since I saw it on TechCrunch. It’s kind of like Risk, but more complex. Good with multiple players.
Let me know (tom_croucher@yahoo.com) if you want an invite and I’ll send you one to a game you can join.
Technorati Tags:
Games, weewar, web20