Just a normal stroll in the park, or is it?

I saw this at the monkey sanctuary we visited today - thought it was awesome!

I've just got the new iOS4.0.1 update from iTunes and you can clearly see I have full reception - phone was gripped in the 'special place'

Not the most scientific method ever, but it works for me!

It amazes me how many people I speak to that think they use more than 750MB (or a GB) on their iPhone with no data to prove it.

It's really easy to see how much data you use, visit settings->general->usage and it will show you your data usage and when you last reset the stats.

Seems O2 may have finally done something right, kind of.

If you request a free iPad microsim it comes in a handy normal size sim holder which you can then use with a sharp knife to cut your normal sim card down to size.

I used this on my pay monthly dongle sim/contract successfully as it was still in contract and o2 wouldn't swap it for a micro sim.

I have written a few other posts about this, but since I now have my
iPhone I thought I'd document everything for completeness.

On the 24th of June I visited my local Vodafone store to get a new
iPhone, I was 12th inline for a 32GB iPhone and they had 11. 8 days
later I had the phone I wanted, but as seems to be the case with me it
was a difficult journey to get it.

On the 24th a helpful man at Vodafone went through their sign up
process, did my credit check then found out they had just sold the
last phone. As this was at 730 he said he would ring a couple of local
stores at 9am to try and obtain a handset. At 930 he called me to say
he was unsuccessful, asked me what I wanted to do and we agreed I'd
order one online.

By 940 my order was placed and I had my order confirmation email. At
this point Vodafone still had stock online so I made the assumption
mine had been reserved.

On Thursday afternoon I had an email asking me to call Vodafone about
my order. It turns out the order had been put on hold as the system
was confused that I already had an account and couldn't work out if
this was a new order or an addition to my existing order.

It was this inadvertent account creation that would be the source of
my problems over the next week - the butterfly effect.

It turns out that due to this hold up my phone hadn't been reserved
and it was now on back order, however it took me over an hour on hold
to Vodafone to get to this stage and cost me the best part of £20 as
they only provide an 0844 number to contact them if you are not yet a
customer.

After a few days of chasing I received an email on the Wednesday that
my phone would be with me by 6pm on Friday. Great. But Vodafone were
still to give me problems.

It seems everyone but me had a tracking email to tell them the
progress of their phone. I called at 1pm on Friday to see if my phone
had been dispatched. Turns out it had actually arrived at the store at
10am the previous day and nobody had bothered to call me.

To be fair to Vodafone none of this individual issues were major and
they did help to resolve them, but due to the increased demands on
their systems it took longer and cost me money to resolve it.

I'm surprised I received no tracking email as it would seem the sort
of thing that would be automated by their system and to top it all
off, my friend who ordered his iPhone at the same time as me to the
same store got his a week earlier - goes to show what one seemingly
innocent event can do!

I now have my phone, my number will be ported tomorrow and hopefully I
will be able to put this behind me. As somebody who works with
organisations to implement and maintain their CRM systems I am
surprised that this process was not more streamlined - I think I am
the expection rather than the norm in this case, but a phone call from
Vodafone would have been nice at some point as my feeling is that this
would still be stuck in the system if I hadn't been actively chasing
it.

So after having my phone on speak phone for over 2 hours today a
helpful person in the customer service team finally managed to massage
my order through the system and it is now awaiting stock.

I can't help but feel slightly frustrated at this whole process
andthat due to a few issues with the store creating me an account and
the vodafone online ordering system getting confused - I am now
awaiting the back order stock, whereas my friend who order at the same
time yesterday but didn't have his order held up is now the proud
owner of an iPhone4 and I still don't have an ETA.

It's not been the best onboarding process of a new customer ever and
it's not as though vodafone where unaware of the number of people who
would want to come onboard, I hope it will be worth it.

I popped by the Vodafone UK store yesterday at 7am to pick up a new
iPhone, I was 12th in the queue and they only had 11 32GB iPhones. I
didn't find this out until they had set up and done a credit check on
my account.

This is when my issues with Vodafone started. The helpful chap in the
store said he would ring round a couple of local stores when they
opened to see if he could find one. He dutifully rang me back at 9.30
and told me there weren't any available. So I said OK, thanked him and
said I would place an order online.

I then placed an order online at about 9.30 and had a confirmation at
9.50am on the 24th June.

At 15.14 I then received an email asking to call vodafone. It turns
out this is because they were confused that the store had opened an
account and I had placed an order online. I explained what had
happened and was told that it would all go through now.

I placed a couple of calls with Vodafone in the evening, couldn't get
through to online orders and nobody in customer service could offer
any help/advice.

Fast forward to 25th and it turns out that Vodafone haven't reserved
me a handset even though I placed the order before they ran out of
stock, my order hasn't progressed any further forward than when I
placed it 24 hours earlier and they don't really know what has been
going on.

I'm still on hold to Vodafone and will update as I know more ...

I've only had my hands on my iPad for a few days and I still can't put
my finger on what makes it a great device - although it definitely is.

Once I get the following apps on it (and multi-tasking so I can run
spotify in the background) I'll be a happy chap:

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• Spotify