I bought a prepaid sim to put into an old iphone to give the boy when he started at the new school. The phone, of course, has been teh AWSm, especially the Orwellian tracking capabilities.
But fuck me sideways, the prepaid tariffs are insanely expensive compared to plans. In two weeks of minimal use it’s blown through as much credit as i’d use in a month or two. I keep having to top it up at the end of each week. And believe Ive checked for calls to dodgy numbers and unauthorised web activity. Nada.
It’s just telstra’s very very expensive prepaid. I’m not sure what to do. Vodafail are hopeless in all respects. And I’m feuding with Optarse; a blood feud I intend to take to my grave. I fear I’m gonna have to sign him up for a plan.
Motherfuckers.
MATE!, condolences for you / your dad, its in the nothing to look forward to category as far as I am concerned.
I know not all will say, and being the position I am I am blessed, but shall any ways.
I constantly bench,mark myself, for the good and bad it delivers, against my relationship with my father. He is still alive, and at the moment is 63, I am 43.
The fact I tend to treat him, and conversely, he me, like brothers, is as far as I am concerned. testament to our relationship. That THING we have, is pretty much all his doing and likewise, I strive for that with my boys. To say the loss of my father would be catastrophic, is understating it by any magnitude you may well inside this realm wish to apply.
he is not perfect, but I have watched him dedicate his life to his children, that’s me, and my two younger sisters and I know full well, he has shown strength, and violence, when necessary. Thats tempered with with the knowledge at times meek may have been assumed, but rarely and only ever for the greater good. Our Dads are GOD’s, If I manage to live my life in half the manner he has, with half the satisfaction and success then I shall have accomplished much and be a happy man. It will be a bad, sad and extremely sorrowful day and I wish that it will not arrive.
You have my thoughts Mick!
Cheers
H
And mine.
And mine. Know the feeling Mick. My dad died in 2005 and I still see things and think “that’d give Dad a laugh”. Tough old bugger & a top bloke.
Mick, I am so sorry to hear this.
Thoughts are with you and your family.
Trish
Sorry for your loss Mick.
I do need to go visit my Dad while i can.
That definitely does fall into the bad day category. I’m sorry to hear your sad news, Mick. It’s a horrible thing to have to go through; my condolences to you and your family.
I’m sorry to hear of your loss, Mick. Condolences.
Mick, I can hardly claim to know you, nor your father, but hey…
Thinking of you and yours, and your loss.
Nbob– Jeeeezuzz, really? (I don’t pay it, her father does, but I had no idea about the extent of the damage) And thanks, all note3d.
Therbs–similarly, noted. You get quite a lot.
Hi Mick–sorry I haven’t chatted to you in ages as I have been too lazy , and even some times working ;) to go to Flitter.
I’m sorry for you , that’s a touhg day; may you go gently and just hang back and give yourself some time xx
MickH, condolences mate.
My sympathies as well Mick.
Now to be completely insensitive, back to the mobile phone tariff debate. I’m from the UK and, when I landed on these fine shores, I got myself a pre-paid mobile. And was completely flummoxed. What was this crap about buying a 30 dollar credit and getting $350 dollars worth of calls? How does that work? In the UK you know how much a call costs and you know how much a text costs so you buy a 10 quid prepay and you’re good to go. (Although you can buy “text-packs” id you’re a heavy SMS user)
So I didn’t have a clue exactly how much I was getting charged per text or call. Over here, I was a very light user. Pretty much only calling or texting the missus. So 30 days pass. I’d checked my usage a couple of days before and I had $24 dollar balance and then, suddenly, no balance at all? What was this witchcraft? Where had my money gone.
So I rang up and was told that prepaid credit expires after 30 days. This was news to me. In the UK, every company had credit that didn’t expire. You used the phone until the money you’d paid ran out. Over here they just gouge you.
Think about it. When you fill the car with petrol it doesn’t suddenly evaporate after 30 days – so why does this happen with phone credit? As a pre-paid customer, you’re already slugged with higher call and text charges compared to those on contract (and you don’t get a shiny new phone every two years), which more than pays for your access to the network – expiring credit is just theft in my humble opinion.
If they tried that in the UK there’d be riots in the streets. Oh – hang on……
Cheers
Thanks everyone for your kind thoughts. I wasn’t going to say anything but given the circumstances today I thought it best I explain.
Some of you knew that my dad was sick. He was diagnosed with a rare aggressive cancer in late September in Bundaberg and was almost consistently living with us down here since. I watched him deteriorate, becoming weaker after each Chemo session until finally I had to take him to the Mater emergency about 3 weeks ago. His heart, which was never strong, couldn’t handle the treatments and was only functioning at about 20% We thought we lost him about 2 weeks ago but he rallied and we had another week with him. Finally on Australia day the dreaded phone call came that he was crashing again and we’d best come in so we raced to the Mater. But he was a fighter and hung in there so my sister was able to get down from Gladstone. He finally lost the fight at 5.25am on the 27th (thank god it wasn’t Australia day) surrounded by my mum, my sister and her husband and myself and my wife (my rock)
The funeral today was fantastic, I totally recommend Tony Hollands Funerals, they we very efficient and understanding and the celebrant they organised was awesome.
Dad got a great send off.
I know! Personal phones were inconceivably expensive when I was a kid, so I went to school without a phone. Come to think of it, so did all the rest of my mates. Such devices hadn’t been invented.
We did carry a bit of pocket change to make a pay call when needed, but really, when did we ever need to place a call that the school administration had not already made?
Robert, You think you had it rough, back in GreyBeard’s yoof 3G was what you had for breakfast, a handful of size 3 gravel. The web was what spiders spun. Mobiles hung from the roof of your cave to entertain babies. and a broad-ban was being barred from the cave after eating Broad Beans.
Oh shit Mick. I’m sorry for your loss mate.
I’m intrigued by this concept of Child Tracking.
What’s the range?
Biology class to Humanities block to Tennis Courts?
Surely it would be cheaper, easier & more efficient to get the vet to microchip them?
No Aunty Q, the microchip only works when you scan it. Thanks to the iKnowWhereYouAre software children can be continuously tracked by their parents, Apple Corp, the government of the PRC, the NSA and the WTFIDK. No nipping off to Mandy’s house for a bit of advanced Show & Tell for the those kiddies. Not that I ever did that sort of thing. Gawd. Mandy would be 60 and probably a grandmother. She was so, erm, unwrinkled then.
Be that as it may, poor NBob is probably still wondering why the mobile he got for Xmas is the size of a brick. Well it’s hard to fit an EPIRB into anything smaller with current technology and the Dugong Watch people were quite insistent that he stay out of the water.
Quokka, I’d suggest going the whole hog and pairing said chip with an immobiliser. So if they stray from the narrow band of allowable locations, they literally stop in their tracks. Pickup fee to be subtracted from pocket money.
And you lot thought helicopter parents were over the top…
I have just discovered another little mobile phone rort. The Teen rang us reverse charges on the mobile this afternoon. It costs $4.50 a minute. Seriously! And – get this – even after the call ends, it keeps racking up $4.50 every minute until you send a “stop” message to 1800 reverse. It’s just cost us $13.50 for a 30 second phone call, because we didn’t know about the “stop” requirement.
I am jealous of Europe for only one reason
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/hard-to-compete-with-free-20-for-unlimited-voice-text-and-3g-data.ars
“This last week, Free dropped a nuke on the wireless business, too. For €19.99, subscribers can get unlimited calls to mobile and fixed line phones in France (and to fixed line phones in 40 other countries). They get unlimited text messages. They get unlimited 3G data (with a “fair use” policy). They get net neutrality. And they get it all without a contract.
It gets better. If you subscriber to Free broadband, the wireless phone service costs only €15.99 a month.
Finally, light users can have 60 minutes and 60 texts for €2 a month—and Free broadband subscribers get it free.”
Can someone invite them down here please
interesting article Tqft even if it was poorly written.
But you have to ask, does it have its own network or does it piggyback?
Is the service so overloaded that it has service like vodaphone or Optus did a while back when it was so cheap even one jumped on it and drowned it?
So it might be cheap but what about the service and coverage?
What a lot of people are still not aware of is that mobile networks are very susceptible to overuse or capacity problems. too many users on a cell causes all sorts of major useage issues.
So you have to ask yourself what is most important to you, quantity ($) or quality (speed & coverage). Its amazing how many people think its $ until they try and use the service and then get pissed off with it. So its Volkswagens or Ferraris.
When I finally caved in and got a cell phone last year, I ended up with an AT&T plan of US$25/quarter prepaid. Calls are $0.10/minute, but since I average less than 20 minutes/week (*far* less) on the phone, the balance of unused minutes just remorselessly climbs. No idea how I’m going to get rid of them.
My colleagues talk about how wonderful it is to have a plan that costs $80/month, and as far as I can tell they are speaking martian gibberish. I resent paying $100/year, I can’t imagine spending $1000/year for a device I hate in the first place.
So I’m all keen on finding out when the Samsung Galaxy “Note” will be available on which Telstra plan. Completely lost patience with the networks associated with Voda. And Optarse lost me when they refused me coverage as a penniless student — they have many miles to cover before I’d consider doing business with them now, and I see no evidence they ever will. And frankly I’m sick of roaming charges. When I look back on my mobile (and especially mobile data) history, I find the big T was always accessible some way or other.
Yes, I’ll likely find getting a ‘droid handheld to play nice with Apple stuff to be a hassle. At least as far as music and photos goes, anyway. But yanno. It’s not a good long-term proposition locking in to one company’s DRM. Long term, any DRM is poisonous, but we’ll see where things go I suppose
So, was there a verdict, JB? what’d you decide on?
Abi, I’n thinking of changing to telstra’s ‘encore’ offer, or switching to these trustworthy looking coves. http://www.amaysim.com.au