Some consumer issues...

I have recently had a bit of a run of consumer issues. I thought I would jot them down so people who might be in similar situations might know they are not the only ones.

A new iPhone
I have splashed out and bought a new iPhone. My 6 year old Nokia finally died after the key pad snapped off it. The iPhone is just awesome. It easily connects to both my personal GMAIL accounts and my work Exchange server. The apps are so cool and the camera is not bad. Facebook is just seamless. I have my iPhone on Vodafone. It is pretty good. One interesting thing is that after two weeks I have only used 17.2Mb+3.5Mb (ie 20.7Mb) of data despite not really holding back. The $40 Vodafone plan has 250Mb per month in it so I should be fine. I am surprised to see in my current balance however that I only have 183Mb left. It may be that Vodafone have pro-rated the allowance for the part month. It will be something to watch as the iPhone gives accurate data usage and I wouldn't put it past a telco to diddle people on a bit of data counting. That said Vodafone have always treated me well so I will give them the benefit of the doubt and wait for my invoice to see what's up.

I have been asking our Telecom account manager at work about and iPhone for the boss. She has a Blackberry and after over 6 months of trying I have given up trying to make it work with our Exchange server. Telecom (bless their socks) can't promise anything but they do want to point out that there network is faster than Vodafone's. Hopefully most people are bright enough to realise that any network with no one on it will be ridiculously fast compared to a network that has 50%+ of all cell phone users on it and using it every day. When Telecom move their customer base onto their network, let's then see what their real world speeds are like.

Interestingly one of the phones Telecom were offering us was the Nokia E35 (think that is what it is called). It is the iPhone competitor. Nokia just launched their Apps store and it has crashed and basically the reviews suck. Apple have recently sold their billionth application. Bit of a difference.

New carpet
We have had new carpet installed through Carpet One. The price was excellent and the quality of the carpet is top notch. The installation process has been an absolute nightmare. We have still to have the carpet fully installed and to a quality level I am happy with. The techniques used are cheap and will show in the long term. I would probably recommend Carpet One BUT I would be very specific about how I wanted the carpet laid.

Births, Deaths and Marriages
With Larissa's birth we obviously registered her birth and got confirmation of her registration. Then we got a letter "reminding" us that it was against the law not to register a new baby. Apparently the hospital had sent two notifications. And apparently Births, Deaths and Marriages don't have even the most rudimentary duplicate checking procedures and programs in their system. And they said they would get back to me in 5 days and didn't. It was amazing how quickly they got back to me when I forwarded my correspondence to the Minister's office. If government departments are going to wag the big stick of the law at Joe Citizen, they should at least have the decency to make sure they are right in doing so.