I <3 Optus!

Today I had one of those rare strokes of luck that I treasure. Telstra recently converted me from a 23 year Telstra stalwart to an Optus Yes man, by being a pack of stingy impersonal losers. They lost my details and left me without any way to recharge my phone while I was out, caused me a great many hassles making a promised phone call to a possible future employer, and then compounded that by losing even more of my details. A lesser, more criminally minded person would have taken advantage of that to create a fake persona but A) I'm not one of those and B) I was so pissed off at them that even had I been one of those I would still have cut up the SIM card exactly the same way.

Pity actually - should have downloaded my contacts off it first I guess... Nevahmind! Still on the memory of the mobile anyway, just that it was having troubles letting me key anything in or scroll through lists and desperatelyt needed replacing.

So Friday, being the eternal AntiGeek that I seem to be becoming, I went to Dick Smith's in Midland, poked around their mobile phone cabinet, and asked the hard questions:

"Does this one have an FM radio? And this one, can I just buy it and keep my current Optus plan? Does the camera work on this one?"

I finally bought a cheap red phone. Umm with beige front and back plates, yeah, why do you ask? Model number? Sorry, didn't know that until I decided I should read the manual. Nokia 5070, very basic. Look, it's red and it only cost me $127 outright cos I already have the prepaid plan, what more could I ask for?

And so I topped up the credit (Optus Turbocharge Plus, very schmick, pay $40 and get $240 worth of credits) and set up Optus Zoo. Then I phoned Optus to ask why I couldn't get my rigth model number to be accepted by the online application. (Hey - I was PROUD of that mothertrucken model number, I'd only just realised that knowing it made me a mobilephone GEEKUEBERLORD! )

And then we discussed the SIM card already included with the phone, and the fact that I could get $10 of free credit even though I wasn't using the new SIM. So I asked for that to be done, went back to my credit check, $220 no worries! (I'd already spent $30 setting up and using various web based stufflike mobile GMail, some searches, and read a few blog posts just because I could so I'd used a bit of credit... )

Today, had a few calls to make and as a sort of rough "fuel consumption" gauge, checked my credit again. Now I have to say that my parents, superstitious Europeans that they were, always told me that itchy palms meant money. Left comes in, right goes out. My left palm itched like crazy... "Your prepaid balance is $440.86 cents" my recorded voice response system told me.

Yeap - the second recharge, despite being only $10, must have triggered off some weirdness, and I now have four to seven weeks (not sure exactly yet) to spend the credit or lose it. Hmm. Made over $40 of calls today anyway, just in case it all vanishes tomorrow again. So I've gotten out what I put in, at least.

But this is good, I don't often get a lucky windfall like this. Viva Optus! Oh Yes!