Nightmare with SFR Red

i know i haven't blogged for a looooong time, but i just need to vent my frustration at SFR. they have this cheap subscription plan called SFR Red, and to be quite fair, their network coverage is good. it is. but the customer service is unbelievably and unforgivably bad.

i lost my mobile phone three weeks ago. and since this is a 100% online-only service, the only way you can have your line suspended is, you guess it, online. but their website is always down when you get to the "report theft and suspend your line" section. and since i had no phone, and i lost it during the weekend, i had to wait two days before i can finally borrow a phone from a friend using the same network provider to call their customer service hotline (which isn't really a hotline because you can call them only from 8AM to 10pm monday to saturday).

so, finally, i was able to call customer service, tell them about my concern, asked my line to be suspended (my sim card had no pin, so the thief could use my line to call anywhere he/she wants, for as long as he/she wants), and ordered a new sim (which isn't free and cost me 10€ on my next bill). i gave them precisely my phone model, so they would send me the correct size of the sim card. the customer service bragged that they would send me a card that is pre-cut for all mobile phone models.

i waited two weeks. two weeks. after that two weeks, i called them again to ask where my sim card has gone and why it was taking too long. i was told the sim card was sent the next day after my first call. so i waited another couple of days. still, no new sim on my mailbox. on my third call, i was asked to just go to any SFR boutique and buy my sim card from there. i was supposed to pay 10€ upfront for the card, and another 10€ again on my bill (which the customer service agent said will be reimbursed on my next, next bill).

i had no choice but to agree, since it's been nearing three weeks that i don't have my telephone line. and i was assured over the phone that i could do that, get a new sim from a boutique, as long as i pay for it. but when i went to an SFR boutique i was told there that they couldn't give me a new sim card because, at the boutiques, they don't have sim cards that are compatible with the subscription that i have (the online subscription), and that i could only get it online. i tried three more boutiques just to be sure. they all told the same thing. and they're not even helpful. they told me, "well, you took the plan that's 100% serviceable online". As if being a customer of SFR RED doesn't make you an SFR customer. As if SFR Red isn't even from SFR.

so again, i called up the customer service, using a friend's phone. and finally, we just agreed for them to send me another sim card. and then i found out they have my address wrong. so that was probably why i never received the first one that they were supposed to have sent. and once again, the customer service agent on the phone bragged that the new sim card is pre-cut to cater to all phone models.

it took me four days before i finally received the new sim. and when i did, i tried to activate it immediately. it's been exactly three weeks that i had no phone line. and again, the only wat to do it is online. imagine my dismay when, as i tried to activate it online, the activation page was asking for a 14-digit number at the back of the card. my card had 13. so again, i had to reach their customer service online. and asked how i can activate the new sim. imagine my new frustration when i was told that i was sent the wrong sim card. that the one they sent me is a post-paid card used for internet subscription. not for a telephone line.

during all my calls, i have precisely told them under which plan i am subscribed to. and yet i was sent the wrong kind of sim card. i mean, wtf??????

so once again, i was promised to receive a new sim card in a few days. at first i was really, really angry. three weeks. three weeks for that. the agent said i will be reimbursed the full month payment on my bill. but it wasn't that that was making me so angry. it was the full three weeks of inconvenience of not being reachable by phone. and then of calling them numerous times, only to be sent the wrong kind of sim card for my subscription. how can they have sent me the wrong kind of sim card for my plan??? they're supposed to have on their records the kind of subscription that i have! and i found out, that they didn't even suspend my line in the first place the first time i called their customer service).

i know that i get what i paid for. i subscribed to a cheap plan, and so ofcourse i get the cheap customer service that they have. but still, it is unacceptable. having no physical customer service is cheap enough. but to have this kind of inconvenience on top of that?

i've been a customer of FreeMobile, which, really, have a great customer service, despite the fact that they're also an online-service only subscription. their online service is very efficient, and very fast. and you very rarely have any issues with Free Mobile that needs their customer service. but their network coverage is really bad, you lost network signal in some parts of a building, and poor coverage in some areas of the city. and despite having 4G, their internet signal is really very poor. i could say the same for the internet signal of Sosh (the cheap online subscription of orange), which i also subscribed to last year).

i have also subscribed to b-and-you (the online subscription of Bouygues Telecom, which, for me, by far is the best, in terms of network and internet coverage. i never lose signal anywhere, and once i've had to order a new sim card when my phone was stolen (yes, i do tend to have my phones stolen frequently in paris). i got my new sim card in just two days after my call. i just transferred to SFR Red because the phone that was handed down to me then was locked to SFR, and at the time, there was no way for me to unlock it).

so now i'm thinking of terminating my subscription the moment i receive my new sim card, and go back to b-and-you. atleast i never had any problem with b-and-you, nor with free, when it comes to their online customer service.

UPDATE:

after another week of waiting for the arrival of my sim card, it still didn't arrive. i went online again 7 days after my last contact with the customer service. guess what? they sent the sim card again to the wrong address that they had before. wow, really, SFR??? it's starting to seem as if they really have no intention of providing good customer service, even online.

Meron Din Dito Non!

exactly five days ago,during alan's afternoon break from work, he came home to find our apartment had been burglarized while we were all out (alan and i were at work and chichi was in school).  in a panicked and teary voice, he called me at work to tell me the bad news. i actually had to tell him to calm down and check what are missing. yes, burglaries happen here, too, in France. it's not something new to me. i've heard of other filipino families' homes that have been burglarized before. heck, somebody even burgled my brother's home in Marseilles last year (good thing, though, that here in France, burglars break in to people's homes when the occupants are not at home). but still... it's something that you never expect, or you never imagine would happen, in your own home. especially when you live in a very, very, very old building like ours.i mean...

how the burglar broke our door to get inside our apartment

really, our building is ancient. and not like the 'chic' kind of ancient, mind you. it's cheap-ancient (arghhh..... one day i'll take a picture of the building where our apartment is housed and you'll understand what i meant). or maybe that just made our building easier to get into, because it's old, not that much security, etc...

the repairman that the insurance company sent us to check our door after the break-in told us that our door lock was made of very good quality. apparently, the wood in which our door was made of probably wasn't. because the burglar was able to hack into it (literally) to get to the lock.

it's a good thing, though, that the burglar (i'm pretty positive it's just one person) who entered our apartment was only after some cash (and jewelry). i wouldn't say what he was able to take away was just some petty cash. and the jewelry... oh, i don't even want to think about how much they're worth... there wasn't a lot that was taken from me, just a couple of gold rings and some pairs of earrings (i don't own a lot of gold jewelry), chichi's jewelry were worth more (coz she owns more than i do)... and alan has most. i never realized he owned a lot until we started to assess the amount of the jewelry that the burglar took, because alan never liked to wear any gold jewelry before. and he seemed to have taken a fancy to alan's wrist watches, and perfumes as well.... i swear i don't even want to start thinking about how much all those cost... but trying to think positively, i just thought that, if the burglar decided to also take all our other valuables at home (which, consist mostly of tech gadgets) he would have gotten much, much more. i would be totally devastated if that happened because those things aren't something that you can just save up for to buy any day.

i think the burglar was most likely to be in his teens. owing to the fact that he didn't bother to take any of our gadgets (which were all over our home), which meant that he didn't want to bother  about selling those stuff, and the fact that he took interest in alan's perfumes. and lastly... because he took the time to open and devour chichi's calendar chocolates (i don't know how to describe it, but it's a box containing pieces of individually wrapped chocolates where you open just one piece each day, it's a french christmas thing... and it certainly is a hassle to open one piece, much more all of them while you're burgling!). he could have eaten any other food or chocolate at home, but he ate chichi's. that's a "children's chocolate", dude! geesh, he probably hardly ever got some when he was a kid.

what's sad, though, is the fact that in burglaries, our insurance does not cover cash, and stolen items that have no proof of purchase. most of our jewelry were given to us as gifts, and those that we bought, we no longer have the receipts for. so basically, we really won't be getting any compensation from our insurance.

a view of our bedroom floor from our tiny hallway.

and while i'm still glad and thankful that the burglar didn't take away everything (like what happened with my brother's home where the burglar took all of their cash and valuables... you know, jewelry and all the stuff that could be hand-carried).. i'm most annoyed with the fact that he left our home in such an awful mess! i mean... each and every one of our relative has always known that you'll never find our home neat and in order at any random day. in fact, there's a whole bunch of fresh laundry that needed to be folded and put away that were piled just on top of our bed, and some of chichi's toys in every corner of the living room. but to leave our home like this, with every single piece of clothing scattered on the floor... even those summer and autumn/spring clothes that we've already packed and put away. and even chichi's small clothes, and ours, that we don't use anymore and were put inside boxes... the old and small and new and clean and dirty clothes... all of them mixed and scattered all over the place. man, what was the dude thinking??? well, i know he was looking for money. but did he really expect us to stash our cash in the hamper???? and the papers... oh the papers that we've  painstakingly sorted into categories and folders are all helter-skelter on the floor of the living room and some in the dining area as well. he just left us with two-weeks' worth of organizing and sorting!

and this is how he left our living room

the door's lock has already been temporarily repaired. the insurance company is yet to get back to us to have the whole thing replaced. the fingerprints taken, the police reports filed, and chichi's calendar chocolate replaced.

yet two thirds of the mess on the floor still remains. we haven't even started sorting out all the eight years' worth of accumulated papers/documents that the effing bast*rd scattered all over our place.

and chichi was soooooo looking forward to putting up the christmas tree this weekend.

oh well, good luck next weekend.

Just When I've Decided to be Girly for Once...

Luck just wouldn't let me.

Last week my husband decided to buy me a very cute, very handy, very small, and very awesome laptop (yes, I just loved it!). No, it's not my birthday. And no, that's not his present for our wedding anniversary last month (of course he already gave me one, and I'm not gonna tell, like you're interested). He bought the laptop because of one teeny weeny discussion we had over our desktop's wallpaper.

Our pc desktop has always had a picture of The Beatles as its wallpaper. Upon our return to Paris, I don't know what's gotten into Alan's head, but he changed it into a picture of his silly dream car. Of course I hated it. And so a teetytat ensued. Well of course you could say why didn't we have separate user accounts in the first place. Well... first of all, we both hated having to choose our user accounts upon startup. Second, we (usually) both run the same programs, apps, etc.... And besides, I usually do all pc-related stuff for him. Upload photos/songs/videos for his archos player, upload games and update firmwares for his PSP, download torrent movies for him, upload stuff and synchronize his PDA. If he wants something done that has anything to do with his gadget toys and the pc, he calls me. So I saw no point in separating user accounts.

But then he also hated the stuff I put in our pc, MY programs, apps, stuff he doesn't use. And he hated the fact that the desktop's full of shortcut icons. And mostly, he hated that he ALWAYS had to choose between windows xp and windows vista everytime our pc boots up, as I installed dual OS in our pc... because I still sometimes miss the practicality of running things on xp. And I told him it didn't matter if he didn't like a lot of things in our pc because he rarely used it anyway. And then he retorted that he rarely used it because he gets lost with all the things that's in it.

And so these things he hated and hated all piled up until finally, great news! He took me to Surcouf and voila! A brand-new laptop of my choice. At first I wanted to get a notebook. They've got a lot of those here. You know, the tiny things that do delightful stuff? I'd have wanted to get a 10-inch screen MSI notebook, with built-in webcam and an 80GB hard disk drive, and it weighs a little over a kilo. It was perfect. Well, almost. Only it had no dvd player. It's a notebook, so what did I expect?

But Alan is not the type of guy who likes things that's missing something and you still have to buy separately. He likes them all packed up in one item. And in a way he was right. So he told me to get a laptop instead. Of all the lappies in that store, acer aspire caught and held my eye. Mainly because of its small size, a 12.1-inch screen (really, I would've chosen size over specs. hehe). And also, Alan was right again when he said that 80 GB of HDD just wouldn't do for me, and running just on windows xp, and I've also somehow come to love vista. Of course it's way more costly compared to MSI Wind. But then, for a laptop that's ultra portable and heavy on the specs, the price is more than worth it.



I've never parted with it since the day we bought it. I take it practically everywhere! It's light and small enough to carry on my backpack.. I'm even using it to write this blog just now.

There's just one thing I hate about this laptop, though. Oh, the laptop's really fine. And gorgeous. I just hate the fact that I couldn't find a decent bag for it. Not a case, mind. A bag. And a girly one. Yes, for once, I'd like to carry a girly bag around. Not only because girly bags look cute. But because of the fact that since I love carrying my lappy everywhere I go, with a girly laptop tote bag you don't look like you're walking around the streets screaming, "I'm carrying a laptop with me!" for every mugger to see (oh yes, there are street muggers in Paris!).

But goodness, gracious, great balls of Julian McMahon, I just couldn't find A. CUTE. GIRLY. LAPTOP. TOTE. BAG. anywhere! why? have they simply forgotten that women buy laptops, as well?

i found some on ebay and amazon. And the prices are cute, too. But the shipping costs double or triple the price of the bags, which totals to a whopping amount. Like, something I could buy a few pair of jeans with. So I got stuck with one of those ugly black square things that when you wear, you look like you're walking around the streets screaming "i'm carrying a laptop with me!" for all the muggers to see (i told you, there are street muggers in Paris!).

But I still love the lappy. Thanks, baby, for getting me one. The pc at home is officially yours now.

To XP-fy or to Vista-fy?

windows vista looks nice.... but it sucks. i mean, really sucks!!! there are lots of programs and applications and... ehem... hacks... that just don't run on vista.

i was comfortably happy with windows xp... until finally, my CPU's not happy with me anymore and decided to say good bye and leave me with no choice but to get myself a new unit... and anyway, a brand-new flat screen monitor would be sweet, too... but i've always told my friends i will never upgrade to vista until maybe in the next two years. but when you go out to buy a new PC you won't get one that still has windows xp running on it. they're all vista! so what choice did i have?

i've always thought vista's uncool. but two hours of fiddling with it, i've changed my mind and decided it's not uncool. it's unacceptable! nevetheless, i told myself maybe it takes just a little getting used to. it wasn't until weeks when i've been encountering problems with programs and applications not running on vista that all my pent-up frustrations began to take toll. and these are programs and applications that i use a lot. i was getting sick and tired of using someone else's PC just to be able to run them. so finally, i decided to downgrade back to xp.

but then i found myself already used to vista's interface and besides, the xp that i downgraded to was xp pro, and i used to run xp home, i'm not sure if there's that much difference, but i kinda missed vista eventhough it sucks, so i upgraded to it again. but i still need those progs and apps that don't run on it, and so round the circle i go...

this is the nth time that i've changed and reverted my OS from vista to xp and back again... i know there's something about having a dual OS or hard drive or whatever that allows you to have two operating systems at the same time but i just can't seem to get the hang of it. everytime i try to make a partition of my hard drive so that i've got vista running on one and xp on the other, i always end up just having either the vista or the xp. and i have to re-install and re-download programs and apps every time i change my OS.

and now i'm not just having problems with these progs and apps, but on my PDA phone as well, as it syncs with my pc each time i connect it. but something went wrong somewhere and now i don't have any data left on my PDA and none on my pc either....

sigh... and to think tomorrow's monday.

like, hell.....