The final installment: Buying a T-Mobile Blackberry from Carphone Warehouse

Have you been following the absolute truama that Steve, Director at mobile agency, iTagg, has been having with his Blackberry?

Here’s the final part of the saga — real time!  The following text relates to this morning!

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Steve continues:
Midday, 24 hours after buying this damned Blackberry from CPW. Ok latest instalment based on the fact that it still says ‘SIM card rejected’ after 24 hours.  For brevity I’ll leave out the fun you have going through security and a million and one keypad options and also the standard re-explaining to each customer services person for the millionth time about what the issue is.

– called cpw. "We can’t do anything here, you will need to speak to blackberry support. I can put you through…transfering you now sir"…brrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is there a single human being at cpw capable of using their internal office phones!!??

– called cpw. Explain whole bloody thing again and they put me through to Bb support.

– "Hi blackberry support here…well we are only handset support not account support but let me try to help, can you give me the number on the SIM card".  After 5 minutes of trying to get the SIM out of the Bb (has anyone tried this – incredibly difficult!) I read the number and he says "sorry but that is not an O2 SIM".  Cpw had put me through to O2 instead of t mobile Bb support!!  Incompetence reigns at Carphone Warehouse!!

– I call t mobile support directly (the previous cpw woman had given the t mobile number even though she’d pressed the big red re-direct button that says ‘O2’). The guy looks up my mobile number and says that it is a PAYG SIM and because my account is a contract one I will have to get cpw to change it over.  So the lovely lady in the Kings Road shop (remember her, I said how helpful she was!) had given me a PAYG instead of contract SIM.

– I call cpw again. "let me call t mobile now for you sir to double check this…ok I have just spoken to them sir and no, we didn’t give you the wrong SIM, t mobile have failed your second credit check and that is what they just told us". "but they told me just 5 minutes ago that they didn’t…oh forget this, let me speak to your supervisor".

– cpw supervisor. "ok my colleague spoke to t mobile sir and no, we didn’t give you the wrong SIM, t mobile have failed your second credit check and that is what they just told us. and it aint just the first level of credit check where we take a deposit and the world is all ok again, this is the big black you are a dodgy east end gangster check where I will now have to ask you to return the phone to the shop". "excuse me!!!!!!!!!!!?????????? but they told me that it was your fault". "no sir they told us it is you who have failed the credit check, please return the phone or it will be blacklisted and you will not be able to use it". "but I can’t use it anyway". "please return the handset to a cpw shop sir".

– ok one last call to t mobile to see if they are suddenly saying what cpw tell me they are saying. I give the full history (the Reduced Shakespeare Company version) and the very lovely woman (and I mean ‘lovely’!) says "ooh I see ok let me look at your account. ah yes it’s showing as a PAYG with a funny symbol up there on my screen which my colleagues should have spotted and which simply means I just need to go to another database…tap tap…ok if I could just double check a few bits of information with you as it had a small tiny temporary block on it…ok that’s great if you could just bear with me while I speak to the provisioning department. let me take your phone number incase we get cut off and I’ll call you straight back". Wow, what a novel idea! I am going to patent that one!!  "excuse me, are you married, because I have never ever ever met such a nice and helpful person as you in my entire history of dealing with t mobile or cpw. will you marry me?". "ooh sir you are cheeky".

– 5 mins on hold. "ok sir it’s now all done".  and as the word ‘done’ falls beautifully from her golden lips, my blackberry springs into life! She is an angel.

So the moral of the story: It is my honest opinion that Carphone Warehouse are unprofessional, unhelpful and unfriendly. They have no idea how to use their own internal phone system. They have no idea what on earth is going on with anything. They simply do not deserve to exist as a company.  They are quite simply incompetent.

So you ask, have I played with the Blackberry yet?  No.  I really can’t be arsed. It is balancing precariously on a pile of instruction manuals, cpw contracts, etc on the corner of my desk…and if it falls on the floor and breaks I really do not give a stuff right now. Ask me again next week once I’ve had chance to calm down and experience the handset rather than the shite company that sold it to me.

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So, has this coloured your Blackberry experience, Steve?  Heh!