Workaholic Dad

The wife and I have decided it was time to enter the 21st century in the technology department and are getting ourselves some Blackberries. I have been a blackberry user since day one always having one for work – but up to this day never for other ventures and private fun. Aside from my work blackberry I have never carried another mobile phone ever since I can remember, but there comes a time when there is more to to staying connected to other obligations than you can get away with doing on your company issued one when you’re on the go.

The Mrs. currently has a PocketWeb from 1und1.de which quite frankly is the biggest piece of shit ever created. We went on a search for new Blackberry for her and where happy to see that 1und1 carries them at very reasonable rates.

I armed myself with all the paperwork for the existing Pocketweb cpntract and dialed 1und1. It didn’t take long to get to the first prompt to enter my customer number and it didn’t recognize mine. I hung up the phone after trying the number right there on my original contract three times and went to look at one of the bills. Ah ha….a different customer number. The system didn’t recognize that either.

After what seemed 2 days of wading through a combination of keypad menus and voice prompts Eureka, finally a human being. This nice young man quickly found my contracts (we have several with the company….web hosting, domains, internet service… you name it) and informed me that normally it would be no problem to upgrade to the Blackberry service but that my contracts was with Vodafone.

Excuse me? Apparently the older customers had service through Vodafone even if they where 1und1 customers. The SIM cards are from Vodafone and we have to cancel with them. Nice folks – you would think that once you get your own SIM cards perhaps you might want to let your customers either have one of yours- the party I have a contract with – or let us know that we are just getting billed by you but are under service by someone else.

So we went ahead and ordered the Mrs. a Blackberry from 1und1 anyway because they have the cheapest rates for her phone activity. Almost exclusively data and only a call here or there.

Monday I have to call Vodafone and see about upgrading the PocketWeb contract. I also have another contract with them for a really cheap low key back-up phone the Mrs has been using. Perhaps I can roll both of those into one Blackberry contract and not pay a dime more then I pay now. That would be sweet.

I am looking forward to arriving in the 21st century – are you addicted to your crackberry? Tell me about it.