Fred Mitchell

I travel a lot on business and one thing I always do is to sign up for any loyalty scheme that I think may be useful.  Today showed how useful this can be as I made the journey to one of my clients sites in The Netherlands.  I used my KLM gold card (soon to be platinum) to go through the fast track security lane and then to get into the lounge at Newcastle Airport.  When I picked up my hire car from Hertz at Amsterdam, I showed my Number #1 Club gold card and got a free upgrade from a Fiat Panda to a Volvo V50.  Then tonight when I checked into my hotel I showed my Flavours gold card and was upgraded to a junior suite.  Finally when I return on Thursday night, I will use my KLM gold card (soon to be platinum) to gain access to the Crown lounge at Amsterdam where I can have free food and drink.

Well I contacted Vodafone and eventually, they agreed to close my account as what I had been told by the salesman was untrue. I am now back with O2 and have 900 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited internet access for £32 per month. On top of this I have added My Europe Extra (free incoming calls and cheaper outgoing calls in Europe) for £4.25 per month and 50mb of data access in Europe for £35 per month. I have also taken amobile landline for £10 per month which gives me a landline number which rings direct to my mobile.

Hopefully, I dont need to be bothered about this for another 2 years. I will let you know if anything changes.

As an update to my previous blog on the subject, I have just received my first bill from Vodafone.  The promised 25mb a month allowance for internet access in Europe for £4.99 per month has not materialised.  I have been charged £40 for internet access for a period of about 2 weeks.  Needless to say, I was straight onto customer services who are investigating.   Their first response was that they dont offer this sort of deal but as I pointed out to the original salesman, this was an essential reqirement.  I will keep you posted with progress.

The current buzz word in the UK is staycation.  The idea is that due to the current credit crunch, more people are staying at home to take their vacations (or holidays as we call them in England), hence the word staycation.

My reason for spending time at home on my holidays is that I spend so much time working away from home that I want to be at home for a change.  For whatever reason, we decided not to go abroad this year and have spent the last two weeks on holiday at home.  That is not to say that we didn’t go anywhere but at least I was at home (almost) every night.

Over the two weeks we have visited Whitby, Staithes and Goathland (home of TV show Heartbeat) in North Yorkshire, Holy Island (Lindisfarne) in Northumberland, Windermere and Bowness in the Lake District as well as Oban, Mull and Fort William in Scotland and Beamish Museum in County Durham.  We have travelled on two different steam railways taken two round trips on ferries (Lakeside to Bowness and Oban to Craignure), taken a journey on a tram and been quad biking, skiing and been trapped by the  tide on Holy Island.

All in all, we were only away from home for two nights as everwhere else was  within driving distance of home.

Here are some links to where we have been:

Whitby

Staithes

Goathland

North Yorkshire Moors Railway

Holy Island of Lindisfarne

Windermere

Bowness

Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway

Windermere Lake Cruises

The Beatrix Potter Museum

Beamish Noth of England Open Air Museum

Xscape Castleford

The Queens Hotel, Oban

Oban to Craignure Ferries

Tobermory

Highland Activites

Ever since I got my first mobile phone over 12 years ago, I have been with O2 and at one time I had 6 phones with them.  In August 2007, I signed up for a new two year contract with O2 even though I had a few doubts about continuing with them.  As soon as I signed up, I wished that I hadnt!

 The existing accounts that I had with O2 and  a new account for a data card, had to be consolidated into one business account.  The exiting accounts were on one computer system and the consoilidated account had to be on another system.  For the first three months I was double charged as the accounts existed on both systems .This was eventually sorted out but then when I wanted to increase my data allowance, this was removed completely instead.  Again, this took months to sort out while I was being charged for all my data usage.  There then followed other similar mistakes by O2 over the remaining term of the contract.

 As you would have thought, I had very quickly decided not to renew my contract with O2 when it came up for renewal.

 The contract was due to expire on 2nd August so I contacted O2 on 6th July to let them know that I would not be renewing.  The very nice lady on the other end of the phone informed me that I had to give 30 days notice prior to the contract expiry date but as I was only a day or two late they would waive this requirement and cancel my accounts on the expiry date.  As expected, I was put through to the retentions team who tried to offer me a deal to get me to stay.  In the UK, O2 are the sole suppliers of the Apple iPhone and I was immediately offered one of these.  The cost was going to be £70 per month and an initial £160 to buy the phone.  Even though I had thought about getting an iPhone, I thought the cost to be far to expensive.  When I mentioned that I had used Palm and Windows Mobile phones in the past, all I was offered was a Blackberry which again, I am not keen on.  Apart from the iPhone and Blackberry, they could only offer very basic phones which could not meet my needs.  Anyway, I thanked the nice lady and confirmed that I would be closing my accounts, which she accepted and confirmed.

 The following weekend, I went shopping for a new phone.  I started by going to the O2 shop in Northumberland Street, Newcastle … big mistake!  Again, all they could offer was a Blackberry or an iPhone but this time the cost was even more.  The reason was that all of the O2 computer systems were down and they could not look at my account to see if I was entitled to a discount.  I was assured that the systems would be back on within an hour so I left the shop and paid a visit to the other phone stores on Northumberland Street.  This included Carphone Warehouse, Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Phones 4U.

 As I spend a lot of the time outside of the UK, I need a deal that will offer good call and data rates from Europe as well as free minutes, texts and internet access within the UK.  This eventually came to a choice between Vodafone and O2 … so I decided to give O2 another try, mistake again!  The systems were still down but I was assured that they would be up very shortly so I went for a coffee.  An hour later, another visit and they were still down so I went to Vodafone!

 At Vodafone, I very quickly agreed on the tariff I wanted whch included 1000 minutes, 250 texts and unlimited internet access in the UK for £35 a month. This included Vodafone passport which includes calls made from Europe in my UK allowance.  I then added on 25mb European data allowance for £5 per month.  The only problem now was which phone.  My existing phone was an HTC Touch HD running Windows Mobile 6.1 which I was very happy with, but as the phone was free I thought I would take a look anyway, I eventually decided on 3!  These were the HTC Hero running Google Android,the  Nokia N97 and the HTC Touch Pro 2 running Windows Mobile.  I was able to have a play with each of these in the shop and plumped for the HTC Touch Pro 2.  As this was a new business account I was opening, I need to get some paperwork from my office before I could open the account  and I needed a PAC code from O2 to transfer my existing number.

 It was then back to the O2 shop to get a PAC code.  The computers were still down so they tried to phone my request through but were held in a queue for 10 minutes before I gave up.  Glad O2 were paying for the call and not me.  So I went home with the Vodafone deal as good as signed but still needing to get a PAC code from O2.

 There then followed another 2 days of calling O2 to try and get my PAC code.  When I eventually got through I was told it would be posted to me and would take up to 5 business days to arrive.  Out of interest, I asked if they could confirm that my accounts would be terminated but after checking they found no record of my request and I would have to give 30 days notice.  As you will understand, I was not very happy and I immediately cancelled the direct debit instruction for O2 with my bank.

 I could go on and on about this but the Vodafone deal is now complete and I eventually received the PAC code to allow me to transfer my existing number to my new HTC Touch Pro 2.  However, the O2 saga is not over yet.  I have had to contact them twice more to get my accounts closed.  I am now waiting for a credit note for the period they have charged me after the original contract expiry date, before I pay the final bill.

 My recommendation is do not sign up with O2!

Well after about two months I am back.  The reasons I have been away include taking a few weeks holiday and re-organising my internet access and domains setups.

 Even tonight I am having problems accessing the internet as the WiFi in the hotel is up and down as usual.  At the moment it is down and I am writing this on my mobile phone and will upload it later.

 Thats it for the moment and I will write a bit more about what I have been doing shortly.

At the moment my main client is an American company called Warnaco who are based in Holland about 100km south of Amsterdam. In Europe, Warnaco are the distributors of Calvin Klein underwear, jeans and accessories. In the US, they also distribute brands such as Speedo and Chaps while they have a number of other brands in other areas of the world.

My main project is the implementation of links between Warnaco and its customers to allow exchange of electronic messages such as product catalogues, orders, despatch advices and invoices.

This week I am working with customers in Germany, France, Switzerland, UK and Italy. Warnaco itself has a multi-national staff and as an example, I am working in the IT department with people from UK, Spain, Portugal, South Africa, Australia, Morocco, Ukraine and of course Holland. Its just as well they all speak good English as I have no language skils at all (typical Engish person!)

This has been a normal sort of week. I left home at about 7:45 on Monday morning, drove to Newcastle airport, took the KLM flight to Amsterdam, picked up a hire car and drove to the office. Total journey time was about 4 hours 45 minutes. Tomorrow, Thursday, I will leave the office at about 18:30 and should arrive home by about 22:30. Going home I gain an hour which is always welcome. When I am in the office I always try and start at about 8:00 and leave at about 18:30 so that I can get a full week in. On Friday I will work from home, mainly for Warnaco but I always try and spend a few hours on other projects or trying to find additional project work.

On Monday it all starts again …