For renewing my NOW-TV contract, I get a HK$100 supermarket coupon.  Someone calls me to tell me that in 4 to 6 weeks, they will mail me a redemption letter so that I can travel to their redemption center to collect the coupon.  ”So, you are going to mail me a piece of paper that says I can go somewhere to collect a piece of paper?  Why not just mail me the piece of paper?”  ”Uhhhhhhhhhhh ….”  ”Yes, I know, you are just the phone person and you don’t set policy and have no control over this but will  you at least agree with me that this makes no sense?”  ”Uhhhhhhhhhhh ….”

I might as well have asked them why the porridge bird lays its eggs in the air.

PCCW and deceptive marketing – nothing new.  Here’s something that turned up in my inbox this morning.

I wasn’t looking closely at first and it struck me as odd because I thought 3 and SmarTone were the only mobile companies carrying Apple products in Hong Kong.  Then I actually looked at it.  It’s not the iPad and the iPhone, it’s the !Pad and the !Phone.

Looks pretty damned Apple-like, doesn’t it?  Yes, those are Samsung’s latest Android devices.  Lately Apple has been throwing all sorts of accusations in Samsung’s direction but the fact remains that these are both said to be pretty good and there are also plenty of people who prefer Android over Apple for mobile devices.   So you’d think that it would be enough for PCCW to say, “Hey! We’ve got great deals on the latest Samsung stuff!”  But no.  Apparently they think they can only get your attention if they try to pretend they’re selling Apple.  Shouldn’t this be illegal?  Isn’t !Phone close enough to iPhone for someone to claim trademark infringement?  Even Samsung doesn’t stoop to selling their stuff this way.  But apparently nothing’s too low for PCCW.

We recently moved and that of course meant moving our phone (mobile signal here is so poor that a landline is a must), internet and NOW TV.  Of course they re-wrote the package, signed me up for another two year contract and offered various bonuses for getting my signature on 67 dotted lines.

A letter arrived yesterday from NOW TV with one of my bonuses.  A HK$50 coupon for Wellcome Supermarkets.  That’s US6.50, folks.  Did they put the coupon in the envelope?  No.  That would have been too easy.  They sent me a fucking redemption letter, telling me that I could go to their centers in Wanchai or Mong Kok to pick up my coupon.

A freaking coupon, a tiny piece of paper, and they couldn’t put that in the envelope?  I have to go there and wait on line to get it?  Seriously.  I mean, come on.

Since I ranted and raved about PCCW’s odd NOW-TV tactics, I suppose it’s only fair that I say something nice about them.

First, I get 11 over-the-air channels; the guy wasn’t sure I would get any.  I get the 4 ATV and TVB channels, all beautiful quality, and a bunch of over-the-air HD channels.  This is the main reason that I went along with this upgrade.  The few cable HD channels I get – Discovery, NatGeo, History – all look gorgeous, even if they don’t seem to have any programming I want to watch.   For some reason, I can only get the box to output at 720p – there is a 1080i option on the box but it’s not working with my 1080p TV.  Don’t know why.  Not a biggie since I don’t have a giant screen.

More important, they wired the NOW-TV differently.  So now, if one box is being used or even both, it doesn’t slow down my Internet access.  And for me that alone makes the upgrade worthwhile.

So a tip o’ the hat to them for getting it right this time.

And now I could be lying in bed watching TV and drifting off to sleep.  Except that my gf has discovered how many friends of hers around the world are also on Skype.  Now that she’s learned that Skype-to-Skype calls over WiFi are completely free, she’s spending hours on the phone every day.

And now she wants me to add Yahoo Messenger to her iPhone, which of course I will.  I can probably deal with the light from the phone while I’m trying to sleep.  But I’ve also decided that I will teach her how to use my MacBook since I no longer need it and probably wouldn’t get major bucks for selling it.  I hope this doesn’t mean she’s gonna be in bed all night with the laptop going.

So off to a PCCW shop tonight.  Once there, the guy informed me that the $1680 price was for the USB modem, not the pocket WiFi gadget, which is $2,480.   So much for the price quote I got on the phone from PCCW, huh?  But I went ahead with this because I use the device daily and have roughly 18 months to go on the contract.

Of course, the guy then tried to up-sell me.  He showed me a Thinkpad laptop, slightly larger than a netbook, whipped out his calculator and ran through some stuff faster than I could follow to show me that if I got a new contract and prepaid it, I’d be paying just $150 a month more than I’m paying now and get the netbook for free.  Honestly, I just wasn’t in the mood for this and I said no, I already have a laptop.  He leaned over and whispered to me, “You could sell the laptop off.”  And he’s probably right about that – they had it priced at $4588, if memory serves, and I’m sure I could have unloaded it on DC Fever for at least $3500.   So maybe I should have, but I didn’t feel like going through all that hassle. I already have a contract at $328 per month.  Add on another roughly $150 per month – $3600 total – get the pocket WiFi free, get the netbook, sell the netbook for hopefully the same $3600 so the replacement thing is essentially free, should be a good deal?  Something about it just seemed wrong to me.

I did point at a nearby 13 inch MacBook Pro and said I’d sign the deal if they could give me that one instead of the stinkpad.  No.  Of course not.  But he did offer me a decent discount if I felt like buying one then and there – I didn’t.   (My 13 inch MacBook is now one year old and working just fine and I think later this year Apple will do yet another upgrade to the MacBook Pro line so I’ll wait and see.)

Okay, this is my fault.  I lost my pocket WiFi device. No one else lost it, I did.

Over the years I’ve trained myself to always look back into the taxi I’m getting out of before closing the door and letting it drive away.  But, as near as I can figure it, I didn’t do that last Tuesday.  I was wearing a suit and the device was in one of the jacket pockets.  After having the flat tire, I was carrying the jacket.  After dropping off the car at a tire shop, I took a taxi home.  It probably slipped out of the pocket into the taxi and thanks to my mood, I never noticed.   I didn’t look for the device after that because I didn’t go out on Tuesday night and on Wednesday, when I left for Manila, I wasn’t planning to take it with me.  Getting ready to go out for the day yesterday, I looked in all the usual spots – and some unusual ones as well – and couldn’t find it anywhere.

And so, once again into the breach, the battle known as PCCW’s phone menu system.

First I looked at the PCCW Netvigator Everywhere website.  The “Contact Us” page has a subscription hotline and a service hotline.  I called the service hotline number.  Nope, it’s for repair only.  They told me to call 1000.

So I did.  It took ten minutes for me to get to talk to a real person.  This was not ten minutes on hold because the operators were busy.  This was ten minutes navigating through the system and listening to a myriad of marketing messages and pre-recorded options that I didn’t need until I could get to a “press 0 to talk to our service representative” choice.  They suspended the service.

I asked them to check and see if there was any usage on the device after February 23rd.  Nope, they can’t.  (That would have confirmed to me that I did indeed lose it and someone found it and is using it; that it’s not simply hiding under a stack of magazines or something.)

So they told me I could go to any PCCW shop and get a new SIM card for the device.  Hold on, wait a second, what about getting a new device?  What good is the SIM card without something to put it into?

Oh.  They don’t know.  They can’t tell me.  I need to call another number to check on the price and how to get one.

Guess which number they give me?  Yes indeed, the number for the Netvigator Everywhere repair center.  Sigh.  But I called it.  “We are repair only.  You need to call the hotline at 1000.”  “Please don’t tell me to call 1000 again.  I did and they told me to call you.  Can you give me a direct line to call?”  They gave me 1833-800.

Called that and it only took about 2 minutes for me to get a person on the line.  Who told me the price ($1,680) and that I could go to any PCCW shop to get the device and a new SIM card.

So it only took 30 minutes to report the loss and find out how to get a replacement.

Before anyone asks, I’m continuing the service first and foremost because I signed a contract that has another 18 months to go.  Beyond that, I was actually very happy with the service quality and relatively happy with the device (short battery life and it gets damned hot but otherwise works as advertised).   I’m not aware of anyone selling a third party device that would work as this one does – if anyone knows of one (and how much it costs), I could presumably go out and buy that and just get the replacement SIM card.

I’ll be so glad when this week is over, whatever the outcome.  Phone rang this morning and woke me up.  Was it the call I was waiting for?  No, it was PCCW to finally explain the roaming charges from my US trip.  At this point I just agreed to anything the guy said to get off the phone and get back to sleep.

Into town for a massage.  Didn’t park at the park ‘n ride in Hang Hau because my back and legs have been bugging me so much that I didn’t feel like doing all that walking.  My reward at the end of the day was the biggest back-up of cars heading into the Eastern Tunnel that I’d ever seen – several kilometers worth of stop & go.  To avoid fuming, kept switching albums.  Maybe it was my mood but none of the new stuff was getting to me – Animal Collective, St. Vincent, Mayer Hawthorne … none of it was registering with me in any sort of positive mood.

Here’s a section of an ad pimping that new K11 “art mall” that’s in the current issue of HK Magazine.  As previously mentioned, this is the “art mall” that doesn’t sell art.  Oh, but they have a Dymocks in there, they must sell some art books, right?  But, we are reliably informed, “the K11 district is going to become a core of multi-cultural dimension in Hong Kong, much like SOHO and Tribeca area in the United States.”  So put that in your pipe and smoke it!  (Man, I wish I still got high, this would make so much more sense to me if I did, I’m sure.)

If you don’t feel like clicking on the ad to see the larger version to read the text, here’s some of what it says.  “To support local art, K11 Art Mall Gallery connects the public with 7 local artists and nearly 20 pieces of their work ….”   Nearly 20?  Nearly?   I think this is the blog of one of the marketing people.  It’s nicely written and 100% bullshit.

As we designed the business model of K11, we decided to introduce “high energy retail” in the hope to provide consumers with a different sensational experience. As they admire the Kollection, indulge in the green paradise, and wander through concept shops and restaurants, they can enjoy their leisure time and have a genuine taste of the city’s new concepts about life.

The city’s new concepts about life?  What’s new or different about a shopping mall with Chow Tai Fook, Clarks, Dymocks, Fila, Hush Puppies, Levis, Mannings and Samsonite shops?

Wait, I’ve saved the scariest bit for last:

To me, K11 is not merely another mall. Instead, it is a new global brand concept which starts in Hong Kong, and will grow across China and gradually step onto the world stage.

Okay, rant over.

Back home.  Dinner.  Movie time?  Except my gf is sleepy.  She suggests that I should put on a movie she won’t like so that she can go to sleep easily.  Hmmm …. I pick Taking Woodstock.  I’m getting a vibe from it because I spent my summers – including the summer of ’69 – in that exact area and the people I’m seeing in the movie are very true to people I knew back then.  But the movie starts very slowly.  I expect her to be asleep in minutes.  Instead, she complains.  “I told you to put on a movie I wouldn’t like, this one looks good, I want to see it, turn it off so we can watch it together another time!”  Hah!

So I put on Il Divo.  I hadn’t originally wanted to watch this, I thought it was about Simon Cowell’s opera singing pop group.  Turns out it’s about Italian politics and came highly recommended to me by a couple of people.  But it’s a challenging film – they set you down right in the middle of things, there seems to be a cast of millions to keep track of, and I confess I was feeling pretty tired as well.  So I saved that for another time too and took a nap.

Problem being, it’s now 12:10 AM and I’m wide awake.  And there’s nothing I’m in the mood to do at the moment.  And now that I’ve completed this post, what do I do next?  A game of Risk, perhaps, that’s always good for killing half an hour and it involves no actual work.

This shit with my Pocket WiFi never seems to end.

So I’m in bed with my gf, we’re watching a movie and the phone rings.  “Unknown number” it says.

“Hello, this is calling from PCCW about your Pocket WiFi service.  As you have outstanding balance of $545 you need to pay it immediately.  You can settle by credit card.  Just give me the three digit security code from the back of your credit card.”

Click! You got it, I hung the fuck up on the bastard.

I then called PCCW.  I checked.  It took me more than 4 minutes to navigate through their voice menus until I could get to an option of “speak to an ostensibly alive person.”

Who basically confirmed what the guy told me on the phone.  That since my autopay is not yet set up on the credit card, they want me to settle outstanding charges immediately.  Because apparently, the fact that I’ve been a customer of theirs since 1995 and have never been late on a single payment means nothing and the US$65 I owe them apparently would make or break their company.

Since I placed the call, at least this time I had a vague idea of who I was talking to.  So I asked for my account number and the actual amount due and then told them I would pay by PPS.

Which I would have done immediately … except that downstairs, there were three guys from PCCW working outside of my house.  They’d arrived unannounced – no phone call or anything to prepare me for the fact that their 3 workmen would be coming onto my private property.  And none of them spoke English.  Apparently something about changing the junction box on the outside wall.   Me being a paranoid creation of the 1960s, I wondered whether this might be PCCW wreaking some form of insane vengeance against me for filing a complaint with the OFTA.

But 15 minutes later, my internet is working again.

But still, just dealing with these people is one disaster after another.

Why do I do it?  They are the only ones offering NOW-TV, which has more English channels that I want than iCable.  They have an exclusive on the Pocket WiFi for the territory.  They offer the fastest broadband service to my little mountain village.  And I’m locked into contracts, so if I canceled with them to go somewhere else, I’d have to pay off the balance of the contracts anyway.

So I have to get my minor little jollies by making these public posts about how GODDAMNED SHITTY THEIR FUCKED UP SERVICE IS.

As if they could care.

Oh good, new blog, three posts, third post already filled with naughty words.

Thanks for visiting!