Tag Archives: Phone

Business, Gadgets, Language, Tech, Work

There’s No Answer to That

Telephone
Image by Here and now, unfortunately, ends my journey on Pixabay from Pixabay

The answerphone has been around for a while but I’m not sure that giving some people the ability to record their own answer message was a wise idea.

There are the ones who think it’s cute and sweet to get their kids to record the message – a real example, they sang “mummy and daddy are not at home, leave a message after the tone” really, slowly.  The rhyming is just about acceptable, the high pitched whine, not so.  Its OK if it’s nanna ringing but when you’re having to ring them three, four or eight times a day to try to arrange an installation or to try to get payment from mummy and daddy the little darlings’ singing gets irritating real quick. 

Though not as irritating as the man who was trying to sound like some kind of nineties “dude” –  please brace yourself – “Yo! Yo!  You’re through to Karl. If you wanna leave a message then you can, it you don’t then…” suddenly sounding like an eighties local radio DJ “…juuust hang up!”  I stifled my laughter, left a message and hung up.

The “insert name here” automated message can be interesting.  “Welcome to the telco messaging service…” the softly spoken woman intones, “DAVE” a gruff male voice barks, then the woman’s back”…cannot take your call, please leave a message after the beep”  One user completely missed the point and it went like this: “Welcome to the Sky messaging service, hi, I’m not available to take your call, leave a message after the beep, is not available to take your call, please leave a message after the beep.”  Hmm.

The telcos are not always so much better – one which shall remain nameless tries to be a bit ladish and overly informal by saying “…when yer done, just hang up”.  Picky, I know, but such things grate with me sometimes.  The other network issue is the overly lengthy message, “…please leave your message after the beep.  When you’ve finished recording please hang up (no shit, I was going to wait) or to change your message press hash” by now the person I was leaving the message for is trying to call me back and I haven’t even got as far as leaving a message.

Advertisement
Standard
Business, Psychology, Society, Tech

Too Good To Be True?

Texting Emoji

Texting Emoji (Photo credit: IntelFreePress)

So I received a text from my mobile network, it’s an offer to entice me to buy a new phone.  It’s the next phone up in the range from the one I have and if I was to wander down to my local network shop and buy it right now, and top up with £20 I’d get a FREE Bluetooth speaker worth £70.  Seventy pounds, yes, really.  The phone alone costs £79!

Immediately I thought, that’s good, tempting, I could take the old phone to Cash Converters.  It’s all to easy to just go ahead and get the deal but as I do I thought, hang on is that really a good deal?  Via the web I found that the phone doesn’t look as nice as the one I have, the screen is only a smidge larger, the processor only a tad faster, the memory only a whisper bigger and the version of Android only a decimal point newer.

On top of that the FREE speaker can be bought on Amazon for £30.  Which is £70 less than the total cost of the new phone.

It’s easy to be caught in the headlights of a speeding special offer but it’s best to leap aside and have a good look at it as it goes by, think “do I really need this” and if not watch it recede into the distance, maybe wait for the next one.  Which won’t be far behind, inevitably.

Standard