The Lift is Up . . . and Down

Finally, after 19 days, the main lift to my apartment is up and running again.  We have all had to do a great deal of walking over the past three weeks and no doubt it has been good for us but it is nice to be able to just pop down the lift to my mail box without having to hike for eight or nine minutes to get there and back; I timed it.

I received a message from Vodaphone a couple of days ago telling me that I needed to upgrade my mobile phone so I went to the local 'everything electrical and electronic' shop and asked for a "dumb phone" which is the name for a simple phone as compared to a smart phone which does far more than I will ever use.

Adrian, who helped me through the very lengthy process of changing over from my old mobile phone said that it was very odd but a large number of Vodaphone owners were coming in and buying new phones.  I explained why we were all doing that but the joke is that they are all being transferred from Vodaphone to Telstra.  My new dumb phone is a Nokia and is not as simple as I had hoped but I will get there eventually.  I have entered the numbers of people I call frequently and worked out how to get and delete messages.

A lot of this lengthy delay was down to Telstra which refused to ratify my new phone and it took almost two hours until Adrian realised that the sticking point was that Telstra had been billing me every two months and now wanted to bill me on a monthly basis.  Once we discovered that and I had agreed to monthly billing the transaction went through.  An interesting way to spend a morning but I can't see why Telstra couldn't have just said that was the problem.

In order to pay my phone bill from now on I am expected to do it online and needed to register with a user name and password.  No problem there except that they needed to check that I was me and sent a code for me to put into the box.  The difficulty was that I had no idea how to read text messages on the new phone and by the time I had worked it out the number had expired and it had sent me another one.  I found that one in time and also how to delete it after I had certified myself.

It is difficult enough for me but how much more confusing for people who had never used a computer or mobile phone to suddenly find that they need to pay online as is happening with more and more public entities

Now a bit of light relief  -  the Limerick:-

A goddess capricious is Fame.
You may strive to make noted your name.
But she either neglects you
Or coolly selects you
For laurels distinct from your aim!

Written by Langford Reed