Fuddland
My mobile phone has been increasingly temperamental of late: the symptoms include mysteriously switching itself off and — more immediately annoyingly — rebooting during the sending of a text or email message [with the message unsent].
My first port of call was the Orange technical support line, who mentioned through the corner of their mouth that this was a known issue with the GD87 and that I need to speak to Panasonic to see what they recommend, and [even more unofficially] I should press them for a new phone if I was really unhappy.
Duly I called Panasonic and, of course, got a different story. According to them, the problem is that Orange have “made changes” to their network to accommodate 3G later this year, which causes my phone to have to regularly search for a new signal [which somehow causes it to reboot]. Frankly, I don’t care who’s fault it is, I’d just like a phone that worked all the time. Luckily there is a glimmer of hope — Panasonic are offering a software upgrade which addresses this issue.
So I have two options: send my phone off to Panasonic and be phone-less for about two weeks, or go into one of five Orange shops which offer the upgrade. That’s right, only five shops, nationwide. One in Manchester, one in Sheffield, one somewhere else I can’t remember, and two in London. [Spoilt for choice really, Leicester being roughly equidistant from nearly all of them.] Oh, and there’s a chance all my data would be lost during the update, so I should try and back that up beforehand. I’ve asked for a return envelope to be sent to me in case I decide to pack it off back to Panasonic, but I’ll probably just wait until I’m next in London and stop in at the shop, although I think I’ll call in advance because the person who does the upgrade isn’t always there.
It’s interesting to note that all of the reviews at Review Centre which describe the same problems as I’m experiencing are from December 2003 onwards, and the reviews from before that time are overwhelmingly positive — which lends weight to the theory that Orange did something to the network.
Update: I’ve spoken to Orange again and let them know what Panasonic said about the network changes affecting the phone, and laughed out loud at the support woman’s response: “That’s crap!” she actually shouted.
Crap or not, I could spend all day bouncing between the two companies as they each blamed the other, so — following some coercion from mrtn — I wanted to see if Orange would offer a replacement phone. Sadly, all I would get would be a reconditioned handset, not a brand new one, so it would have to have the software update applied anyway, and I’d definitely have to transfer my old phone’s data across. So whatever I do, it boils down to getting a phone with the new software version. I might as well put up with the problem for a little while longer and go the the Orange shop. And I’ll get a free phone upgrade when my contract’s up for renewal — roll on August!
