In June, 2012 I visited the O2 shop in 49 George Street, Hove, BN3 3YB, enqurying about opening an account and getting two Samsung S3 mobile phones. David told me I could get the phones virtually free by paying £99.99 upfront and he would credit me £100 into my account for each phone. I still keep his written notes, luckily.
On the next day or two, I revisited the shop. I paid £199.98 for two phones. Christina went through the contract procedure with me. She was fully aware of the £200 credit. However, she told me, she could not add £200 to my account while I was there, because I was porting the numbers from Vodafone to O2. She had to wait a few days until the porting process finished and then my account was active. She said she would add £200 credit in a few days. So I left the shop with two new phones happily.
I have no way to check if O2 has put £200 into my account or not. Only at the time O2 monthly direct debit shows on the bank statement, I know the credit has not been credited. I started tracing the credit in August, 2012. At first, I thought it is a piece of cake to get it back. I did not trace O2 hard. I popped into the O2 shop occasionally when I was on George Street for something else. Sometime I had chance to speak to David, sometime I did not. David never denied his promise – how can he? I am glad I have not thrown away these pieces of little notes.
David asked me at least twice to write down my company name, address, account number, contact number. He always said someone would contact me. From my ten times visits, I received only one call from O2 in October, 2012 (or so, I can’t remember). But he did not sort out my issue straight away, instead he promised another call back within a week. Well, I never received a call back since then.
My last visit to the O2 shop was three weeks ago. I met David. David must think he should do something differently this time. He composed an email to the Area Manager reporting this issue, and clicked “Send” in front of me. I took it that David wanted to correct an error happened 7 month ago, he need some kind of authorisation. David said someone, probably the Area Manager, would contact me by the Friday within that week.
Well, more than a week passed. I had not been contacted by “someone”. I was not surprised this time. I must be a very patient man, but I lost my patience with O2 after half a year tracing the credit. I did something I was reluctant to do. I started a complaint procedure.
I am annoyed at being badly serviced by O2 for 2 aspects.
Why O2 always ignore my queries? Why should I spend so much my valuable time tracing £200 credit? O2 wasted me much more than £200 worth of my time.
O2 customer services seem do not bother with what is happening in the O2 shop. They said to me “the O2 shop is franchised – you have to sort your credit with the shop”. It sounds like “it’s none of my business”. I regard the O2 shop part of O2. Whatever the O2 shop is doing wrongly will ruin the reputation of O2. O2 is responsible for all outlet channels. Even if O2 customer services are not able to sort out the credit alone. They should liaison with the shop instead of asking me to go to the shop.
I have an outdated LCD TV and a nearly outdated Android smart TV set top box. I mean, this Android smart TV set top box was bought a year ago, and it works very slow compared to current market products.
I want to combine these two equipment to make a smart TV. Actually, the only functionality I need out of a smart TV is a DLNA/UPnP player. To be more specific, a DLNA/UPnP player for YouTube.
I want to search for videos on YouTube using my mobile phone, stream to TV, and watch on TV. I do not want to search on this nearly outdated set top box because it is slow, and it accepts input via a fly mouse rather than a touch screen.
At first, I tried to install a few apps (iMediaShare Lite, aMPdroid, DLNA Server) on the set top box, but none of them is a DLNA/UPnP player.
Then I installed XBMC on the set top box, set it can be remotely controlled by UPnP. I also installed Beam on my mobile. Now I can stream YouTube video to my TV. However, XBMC is not reliable on this set top box, most likely due to some bug – this player is not always shown on the list of available DLNA/UPnP players. Every time I have to untick and retick “remotely controlled by UPnP” to force it.
So I have not found a perfect solution for streaming YouTube video to an Android device. I may have to buy a new TV with DLNA/UPnP player built-in.
I was looking for an app on Google Play Store to generate transparent background handwriting in PNG format, which can be put on an electronic document as a signature or watermark. It is either
to save paper – no need to print out a hard copy of document, write on it, then scan it back to an electronic copy.
or to use an existing Android touch screen mobile phone, instead of buying a graphic tablet pad and pen.
I tried a few apps.
Samsung Memo. It can only export JPG or PDF. No transparent background available.
Image Editor. It is slow responding to drawing track. Never record a complete handwriting. Useless. Too many bugs and Ads.
ShoDo. No transparent background available.
Adobe Photoshop Express. Too “express”. It can not open/save as PNG at all.
Handwriting. It can export transparent background PNGs. It is good. However, it always exports 720 x 1280 images on my test device, no matter how small writing. This requires another software to crop the images. So it’s not good enough.
Photo Editor. I did not expect it can export transparent background PNGs, as Photo is not transparent. However, I find it can open a transparent background PNG, write on it, then export as transparent background PNG. This requires another software to produce a blank transparent background PNG before first use. That’s not a problem. However, it is an ad-supported programme, which is a bit annoying.
FreeNote. I have known FreeNote for long, but before today I did not realise it can export transparent background PNGs. It does auto crop and it is ad-free. It does not require other software to do pre or post process. So it is a perfect solution.
I was excited when I saw 4x8GB server memory was selling at a total of USD110.00. It will fit my HP ML110 G7 server very well – ECC, unbuffered. I quickly asked my sister to order and post it to me after she gets it.
After two days my sister told me her order had been cancelled for no reason. I think it is simply because the dealer Computer Memory Solutions does not want to fulfill the order after they realised they had wrongly priced it.
Now it is selling at USD280.00.
Computer Memory Solutions ruined Rakuten.com’s reputation, at least in my memory.
When I was shopping in Asda last night, I came across more than 20 of speaker docks on display. They are all design for iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc. None of them support Android devices.
Suddenly I commiserated with those accessories manufacturers of going to the dead end. Maybe too early for them to realise it’s a dead end, at least they should see there are more users of Android than those of Apple.
Why not make speak docks for Android? Philips is the only one make Android speaker docks, but these products are not widely available in store.