Mobile phone humour: you'd better call me because I can't call you

~~Don't call me, I'll call you~~
Er, second thoughts, you'd better call me because I can't call you

Aren't I lucky! I have a mobile phone with a new psychedelic screen.

There was a time in life when I might really have appreciated its swirl of colours too. Like cool, man.

But I have moved on a bit and the hardest thing I take nowadays is aspirin. I am 46 and all I really wanted from Fone Zone when I bought my phone at Woden in Canberra last year was, well, a phone - one to make calls and take calls.

The bad news is that my Nokia mobile phone no longer functions all that well.

The even worse news, for me, is that people in the shop where I bought the mobile seem to think it's my own tough luck.

"This phone has been dropped," the salesman at Fone Zone told me when I took it in to ask what could be done.

I could have understood this snap diagnosis had the phone been bent out of shape or scratched. But it wasn't/isn't.

The salesman said he could send the phone away for a second opinion but I'd be without it for up to three weeks and he was quite sure the technicians would come to the same conclusion. D'oh.

My phone still works. It's just I cannot see the screen any more because the liquid crystals seem to have dispersed every which way.

This means I cannot make calls from my address book, read text messages, set the alarm and give the phone to my eight-year-old son on long car trips so he can play games in the backseat and not be so fixated in asking: "Are we there yet?"

"I certainly haven't dropped it," I told the salesman incredulously.

At this, he back-pedalled a bit.
The phones did not necessarily have to be dropped for the liquid crystals to disperse, he said. A tap was sometimes enough.

A tap?

"Are you saying," I said, angry now, "that this model of phone is defective?"

Oh no, he said.

Well, that sounds like a bit of a design fault to me.

For those who don't know, Fone Zone is the major sponsor of the Canberra Raiders in the National Rugby League.
In keeping with that rough and tumble game, I would have thought that they'd want the phones they sell to have more of a robust image.
A suggestion: Perhaps the model of phone in question should come packed in cotton wool with a warning that you take it out of the box at your own risk. Or perhaps the Canberra Raiders could change their name to the Brittle Fone Zone Raiders.

I asked the salesman where I could take my complaint further and he handed me over to the only other person in the shop, a woman who appeared to be his superior.

She agreed with his diagnosis.
End of story.
I still had more than a year left on my contract and I'd just have to live with it.

And, sorry, she said, there was no-one else I could complain to.

She said she did not have a business card but at my insistence she wrote down her first name on a map which showed exactly where I could find Fone Zone's service agents.

Amazing, eh?

Not only did Fone Zone staff make technical decisions at the front of the shop, they had done away with customer service. Their bosses must be very happy with the multi-skilling and the wages that saves them.

And the message is clear: Look pal, you might have bought a defective phone from us but it's not our problem. Here's someone else you can go bug while we get on with selling more phones to more unsuspecting people.

I should have known something was up when I climbed Mount Kosciusko, Australia's tallest mountain late last year.

(OK, I am gilding the lily here. 'Climb' is not really the word. A chairlift takes you up the first steep bit and then there's a footpath all the way to the top. Even tall mountains in Australia aren't that big really).

But a companion had an Optus-connected phone and was able to ring his wife and tell her he was standing 2228 metres above sea level.

And my Telstra-connected mobile, hot from Fone Zone, had no coverage.

So I did the only thing left to do with my, at that time, inferior phone: I sat on a rock and played computer games while I could at least still see what was on the screen.

Is my Fone Zone contract over yet?
Is my Fone Zone contract over yet?
Is my Fone Zone contract over yet?
Is my Fone Zone contract over yet?
Is my Fone Zone contract over yet?
Is my Fone Zone contract over yet?

more mobile phone humor:

Bamboozled man in the ring
Did you know that mobile phones these days come with 50-metre swimming pools?
Neither did I until until a phone company representative rang me yesterday and asked if I wanted to upgrade my phone.
I was entitled to a "free" upgrade to a "basic" model phone, she said.
But if I was willing to pay just a teensie, weensie bit more, say $44,000 a month, I could have one with e-mail, backlit screen, Olympic-sized swimming pool and as much caramel fudge as I could eat.

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australia

damaged

consumer affairs

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it