Card readers

A 53-in-1 card reader?  It must be to good to be true.

After spending a brief period of time counting (three times), the various connectors the card reader actually supported came to 31.  So, I wondered, as many of us would.  What happened to the other 22?  Or did they count the various versions of the same type of card.  Like pcmia one thru four?

Wondering what winging an email off their way would produce.  I promptly sent one off.

Four days later a reply popped into my box from their support centre.

"Our reply regarding your question:
It's marketing. It just reads all cards. :)
Beware however that it does not support SDHC unless it is specifically stated."

So in the end, it's just a clever little marketing ploys to get us to part with our cash!

But even though a severe ticking off should be brought in by trading standards, do have to admire the company's honesty at answering a direct question.

When does 512MB equate to 2GB?

When you are a T-Mobile customer upgrading your yearly contract and someone in customer services either can't be bothered to find out, or they think it's a very good late April Fool's wheeze, or it's company policy to get rid of old 512mb cards by telling those who they think are technically non-enabled that "the 512mb card is in fact 2GB, but just labelled incorrectly."

So having a customer (was eavesdropping over flatmate's conversation) call up and be laughingly told that the supplied card has just been labelled wrong and it is in fact 2GB and not the 512MB emblazoned across its front, makes me wonder how many other people have they tried this particular con on.

But today as flatmate spoke with another customer services representative, they apologised and said the correct card would be arriving tomorrow.

It's a shame that a painless upgrade process should be marred by the incorrect card been included in the first place, then by the attitude of the representative of such a big brand.

So T-Mobile, 2 raspberries!

AOL (revisited)

Once more AOL/Carphone warehouse have been at it, from 22:47hrs on the 19th march 2008, the line went down and has so far (now 13:37hrs) stayed down!

Initially only for about 10 minutes, but then it went back down and with it, any chance go getting in customer services until 8am in the morning. So there was nothing to do but tidy up the desktop and head back into the other room to get back to what the vast majority of people would be doing at that time of night, watching the not so square box in the corner, with a very strong cider and snack food.

7.45am arrived. Switched on the modem, hub, router, pc. The routers light's popped on one by one, except the internet one which stubbonly flickered red or remained blank. Took the phone in hand and waited for 8am and with the last number dialled as 7:59 and 59 seconds turned over, I was amazed to actually get through within 20 seconds, a definite first.

So once more it's a network outage, she had no idea why, just that it was an outage been looked into by their technical support people. I viciously doused the thoughts of they need retraining, from reaching handset and expressed my disappointment at been an aol member for over five years to be treated so badly.

She promised it should be up and running in at least two hours time, and with the time now at 13:38hrs there is still no connection.

I believe my grounds for leaving this crumbling edifice of broadbandhell are increasing leaps and bounds.