Phones, and delivery Grrs

[ladyofastolat]

I was supposed to be getting a new mobile phone today. Actually - and I know that many people will find this quite amazing - it's my first mobile phone. I've had a work phone for some years, and since I'm allowed to make personal phone calls if I mark them on an itemised bill and pay the cost back, I haven't seen the need for a personal one. However, the hassle of having to do this means that I very seldom do use it to make personal calls, and because it's a work phone, if often ends up on silent, or languishing in a bag, so I miss the very few calls on I get on it. I'm not a very phone-y person, really, preferring email and the like, but I've come to realise that I do really need a phone of my own.

So I've chosen a new phone, which is about the cheapest I could find that allows internet access. And it was supposed to arrive today, but I got home to find a note through the door saying they'd tried to deliver it, but I was out. Not a problem, I thought, picking up the note and preparing to head back out again to pick it up from the depot ten minutes away. Then I noticed that they'd ticked the "we will try again tomorrow" option, and provided no way for me to change this. I know that some people work part time, and some people make trips out but are at home most days, but I would be willing to bet that the majority of people who are out on a Tuesday are also out on a Wednesday, so automatically trying to redeliver sounds as if it will be waste of the driver's time more often than not.

I just wish there was some consistency. Sometimes they leave them with neighbours, sometimes they take them to the depot, sometimes they redeliver, and sometimes I get packages left under plants or behind pots in the back garden, usually with a note through the door telling me where to look, though once with no note at all, meaning that I only found it days later by chance.

Comments

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I don't have a personal mobile either. They seem so expensive (at least the modern ones do) that I am often staggered when I see people who I know earn a lot less than I do owning something that I would consider very expensive. But then I'm not a very phone-y person either.

I do have a work phone (a Blackberry Curve) that I am allowed to make personal calls on if I exclude them from my expense claim. After deducting calls home when I am working away (which I'm allowed to claim), my monthly personal calls cost is hardly ever more than £1 and often £nil.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

adaese and I each have a personal mobile, as neither of us have work ones. Ours are pay as you go. They each cost us about £50 to buy, around four and six years ago respectively. Top-ups cost us, at a guess, around £60 a year in total.

We really only use them when we're out on our own, to ring home and say what time we'll be back; or occasionally to ring a cab etc if we're out.