{"id":445,"date":"2012-07-08T19:06:48","date_gmt":"2012-07-08T18:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/?p=445"},"modified":"2012-07-08T19:06:48","modified_gmt":"2012-07-08T18:06:48","slug":"i-have-joined-the-dark-side-and-purchased-an-iphone-plus-a-rant-about-o2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/rants\/i-have-joined-the-dark-side-and-purchased-an-iphone-plus-a-rant-about-o2\/","title":{"rendered":"I have joined the dark side and purchased an iPhone, plus a rant about O2"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I have finally joined the world of Apple lovers and bought an iPhone 4S! For those who don’t know why, you should probably read my last blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Getting the iPhone was no where near as easy as it sounds, as I will explain now. But before I start, I advise anyone who wants to get one to go to a 3rd party store and not your network to get one…<\/p>\n

Anyhow it all started after I was sick of the issues with my last phone, the LG Optimus 2X. I thought it was time to get myself a phone I knew I could rely on to work when the time came and to hold a signal when there was actually one present.<\/p>\n

I’m with O2 and have been for 6+ years. I’m quite loyal to them as they’ve been very good to me and signal is generally good everywhere, so I thought I’d try my hand at a contract. I’ve never had one before as I couldn’t justify the cost. I’m on pay and go and I spend less than \u00a310 a month on credit. What can I say, I’m not a heavy user.<\/p>\n

The cheapest contract with a decent allowance and phone payment was \u00a336 a month. Over 2 years that’s around \u00a3850 or so (off the top of my head). That was fair to me, so I decided to go ahead and order it. I got to the last page of the order and it said there was a problem and to try again or phone the supplied number. I thought I may have entered some details for my bank card incorrectly, so I tried again. Same response. I wanted the phone so I decided to call them. On the phone I said I had tried twice already. The rep checked this and she could see 2 failed orders but there was no reason provided for the failure. We tried it over the phone instead, and 20 minutes later we got the same outcome.<\/p>\n

The O2 rep suggested that my card was being declined so I should contact my bank. I went along with it and called my bank and she would call me back in 20 minutes. My bank said that 3 payments for \u00a3117 had left my account and there was no issue their end!!! 3x \u00a3117!!! I was very annoyed. I waited for the rep to call back. 30 minutes later she did and I explained the situation. She was confused at what had happened so she went to get her supervisor. After a short time on hold she returned and said that it failed because I failed the credit check!<\/p>\n

By this point I was very VERY annoyed. How can I fail the credit check? My credit score is flawless. Hell, I’m paying for a car on finance and I had no problem getting credit for that! I’ve never missed a payment and I’m full time employed. Unfortunately the data protection act means she doesn’t have any information as to why I was declined and there was nothing she could do about it. She was very apologetic but it wasn’t her fault. Anyway I said thanks and hung up.<\/p>\n

I decided to screw the contract and decided to buy it out-right. Yup, the full \u00a3500 up front. I didn’t have much of a choice since I wanted to stay on the same network, but not knowing at this point it would have been better to go to a 3rd party store like carphone warehouse, I went ahead with the order.<\/p>\n

What I should have said was I TRIED to go ahead with the order. I got to the last page of the order process and it failed to go through. Now I was pissed off with O2, so screw them. I’ll take my money directly to Apple instead. I went through the order process for the 5th time that evening and I was granted with another failed message. GAH!!! Then it clicked. My card was probably blocked by the bank because of the nature of the purchase. On the phone I went again to find out. 10 minutes on hold and I confirmed with the rep that it was indeed blocked. 5 minutes of security checks and it was unblocked and the order finally went through.<\/p>\n

2 days later, the phone arrives and I’m once again a happy person (for the most part, there were some little niggles but I got those sorted by yesterday).<\/p>\n

Anyway, I’m still not happy with O2 for those things. It’s strange how people with a perfect credit history can’t get finance, yet somebody with no history (lets take for example some 18-19 year old friends of mine) because they’ve never had credit before, can get one without a problem! The whole credit score idea is crap if there is no consistency to the way they accept orders.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, the ordeal is now over and I have a phone that works properly for once. Lets see how long this one lasts, since I’ve had 3 phones in 12 months now (Blackberry, then the LG Optimus 2X, now the iPhone!).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have finally joined the world of Apple lovers and bought an iPhone 4S! For those who don’t know why, you should probably read my last blog. Getting the iPhone was no where near as easy as it sounds, as I will explain now. But before I start, I advise anyone who wants to get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"amp_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electronics","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions\/448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}