Dec 02 2008
the convenience of a cell phone….
I bought my first cell phone about ten years ago. It was one of those big clunky things and i only paid $30 for it. It had been a fido refurbished phone and I was ecstatic to own one. I had carefully programmed all my friends phone numbers in it and off we went to Ottawa from Welland. Oh yeah I was having fun texting and then we get to the 401 East. Yep and for four hours I was out of Range. A total bummer at the time. So I had my nice nap in the back seat, I was driving at the time with my parents.
Once in the hotel I got a signal but of course we were in the middle inside part of the hotel, no signal. So I went out to the lobby and stood there pointing my cell phone at the window and kept getting the message undelivered. About three hours later I received a response and it was “why are you sending duplicate messages? I’ve gotten about twenty of them!” Well that made me chuckle.
Ten years later, I purchased a new cell phone a lovely baby blue one for about $300. It had all the latest toys on it and I moved into a basement apt. Guess what? NO signal again. Now I was ready to tear my hair out. So I moved again, this time to Fort Erie along the lovely parkway. Great reception, not a problem! Then I got my bill, a whopping $80 in roaming charges? when I phoned fido they informed me that i could have requested a “lock” on the signal to only connect to Canadian towers? Gee, I live in Canada, not in the United States so why on earth would I think to ask for such a thing? They actually accused me of going over the border! I told him impossible, I don’t have a car and I hadn’t been over the border in years.
After speaking to corporate and arguing my point, I threatened to leave and they gave me some credits and a new billing plan that would save me money. They also “locked” my signal to the canadian towers.
Then the inevitable happened, my boyfriend spilled his coffee and shorted out my phone! So I decided to go and purchase a new cell phone, this one was cool it had a camera and video on it! the only problem was the texting would always self add words when i was trying to write on it. later i figured out there is an option to switch to just abc and that will stop the T9 option.
My twenty dollar plan turned into $1000 all in one month. My boyfriend had borrowed the phone and talked for 800 minutes instead of my alloted 200! So again, I decided no more big bills, I would go pay as you go and I switched over to telus.
My phone was reliable and well the service wasn’t always the greatest, I kept having my text messages looping and I would get the same message about 20 times and would get billed for it. Finally unlimited texting came available for ten dollars! That saved alot then i looked at the unlimited 45 plan and etc. I tried all the different plans and realized I had cool features but my phone didn’t have any of them.
So I bought a new phone again. This one has internet access and I was all excited to use it for the first time. Every other page it said, not enough memory. Now I bought a 1 Gigabyte storage device and it was so I could take lots of pictures. So I have plenty of memory. Then I also noticed that my battery would charge in one day and be gone the next. Meanwhile good old faithful cell phone still in my purse was fully charged for four days.
So I went in today and was given a new battery. I was told with the defective battery it could affect my not gaining access to the websites? I thought that really odd, but none the less. I was amazed that I have a phone that I can talk on, read emails, check facebook, surf the internet, watch tv and listen to mp3’s.
I still haven’t opened the 200 page book explaining how to use my many features, I am just amazed at being able to carry my entertainment safely in my pant pocket!
