Dave - do you know what is happening at TPO (mobile operator) at present?
I started using them in June (having discovered them via a post of yours, in here). Start of July they breathlessly announced they were about to switch to
4G. Oh and - er - to switch suppliers from EE to Three. A week later I was unable to refresh my normal 'bundle'. They "fixed" this, they said, but already it looked like chaos was beginning to descend.
14th July, my phone went dead with no service at all.
16th July I got an email talking about "problems". Nothing has happened since: no emails, no service, no bundle existing in my account. And NOTHING on their website to indicate that there's anything wrong. And NOTHING from Google along the lines of "Mobile operator TPO goes bust".
What is your phone, can it actually receive a 3 signal? Is there 3 coverage where you are? Do a network scan and see what is out there. Is it Android? Try Network Signal Info from Kaibits Software, that'll give you all the gory details.
Nope... My phone works but it's contract not PAYG. Will have a dig about and see if I'm still on EE or silently migrated to 3. NSI says EE as Net Operator and Sim Operator as TPO.
Forget all that. Just found on the TPO site that if you are without service since the 14th you need a new SIM. There is an online form to complete. IIRC it's in the Help section and related to Network Status.
Dave -- thanks a lot for your advice. Regard all the below as mere chat
-- I'm not asking for further advice!
re What you say above .... yes, my initial version of events was necessarily abbreviated: in fact I did order, and receive the new 4G SIM last week. I then went to the web page to activate it, since the new SIM entails starting up anew with a new operator (3) -- activate a temporary phone number, PAC code etc etc.
The Activation web page would not work: "An error has occurred". I figured this was because I ticked the box that says "Send me a PAC code": see below[1]. So I tried it again without ticking it. I got the error message again. Maybe the website is swamped, I thought. Tried again the next day: consistent 'unknown error'.
So I sent a cry for help via their web page. I immediately got an automatic reply which bounced me back to the web-page-which-does-not-work *and closed the enquiry*!
I sent another enquiry, carefully not mentioning the 4G system, and I have heard nothing since -- this was Saturday/Sunday.
[1] The PAC codes are not available: to quote TPO last week "We still very much hope our network partner will be able to recover your phone number, but we now understand that it could take longer than we initially expected to do this." What the heck does that mean?!?!?!?.
Plus: all of this has happened two weeks *before* it was scheduled to happen. I smell an almighty c*ck-up somewhere.
I've now ordered a SIM from Virgin Mobile: I have to give up on TPO: I've been without a phone -- or help -- for 12 days now (very retro!).
As I said: no further comment from you needed. I was kind of hoping that you'd reply with "Yes! What the hell *is* happening!" but you're completely unaware of all this, which makes me feel that the almighty c*ck-up applies to me alone ... which in turn implies something else :-(
TPO are a bit wobbly, I'm not quite sure where the root cause(s) lye.
The first SIM they sent me worked, except for incoming CLI. Something to do with phone (Samsung SIII Mini), the SIM and "the network". they made a number of test calls to me to get debugging info but ended up sending a new SIM.
Then I had a billing issue they charged for what should have been bundled calls and texts, but only on a Saturday or Sunday... Sorted after the next billing cycle.
Their forgien use charges are a bit of a pain but not being out of the country for 20 years paid no attention to that. I'm about to go abroad but I ain't paying £50 plus plus to enable roaming. I'll just divert to a VOIP number and get a local PAYG SIM.
They are cheap tho' £4.99/month, for about 10 times as many minutes as I use, at least double the data, but I do sometimes exceed the texts but provided that is less than 40 it's still cheaper than the next bundle up.
If I was looking now Asda Mobile would be high up the list. They allow tethering and their PAYG bundles are reasonably cheap as well. And before anyone says "GiffGaff" NFG around here, O2 are a 2G only service...
Haha -- the only reason I went to TPO is that I was with GiffGaff, with whom i was very happy except for one little thing: they use O2, and my house lies in a big fat shadow of O2 coverage (I eventually discovered!).
I went to TPO because they use EE -- with whom I'd had good coverage in the past. 3 weeks after joining them TPO excitedly announced that they were going to an all-4G network ... using Three.
I never got to find out what *their* coverage is like, because it was at that point that they seem to have zapped me from their service. Whenever I send an enquiry (I sent another tonight), I get no response; I still have an account, but it has NO funds (although I know I have at least ?15 in there).
sigh. Actually I'm quite getting to like this no-phone thing.
I don't understand giff-gaff, even though they nicked my name, I use a dongle on 3G with them, but seem to need more than 1gig a month, but there seem to be no other options other than goody bags which has texts and calls which the dongle does not do of course as its for a machine in a remote location. Thenwhen you are getting quite low it won't let you pay them any money to start it anew to be sure it has enough data. It also seems to suggest they give you a generous buffer but that seems to be not the case as it all falls back to 2g straight away so the upload I'm doing then says time lift xx days etc. All I want to do is to be able to say, I need 200 meg for this week, if its about to run out, I'll pay for a new bundle now. No way to do that. its ridiculaous, and when you try to use their talk to an agent it sends you around in circles because the thing you need to talk about is not on their list of things to talk about. I'm beginning to think that all these companies who use web sites as their bpublic facing interface to use a buzzy phrase could do worse than simply employ somebody on a phone line instead. Mind you that person might have english as their 24th language and be no better. Brian
Have you checked on this recently. Giff Gaff changed the T&Cs about a year or so ago and they now do allow early repurchase of Goodybags if you run out of minutes texts or data. You need to have a queued goodybag and when you activate it you throw away any remaining data on the existing one (so you don't do it too soon - but I think it can be set up to occur automajically). I think there is a similar arrangement for GigaBags.
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