O*M*F*G

The other night, the little hardware "Silent" switch fell off the side of my year-old iPhone 3G when I was taking it off mute. As this seemed to result from a defect, and not damage, I decided to see if I could get it fixed under warranty.

I first rang MagnumMac to see if they could tell me if it was covered under warranty, as they are Wellington's only Apple specialist store.

MM: I can't really say for sure. You could try MobilefoneRepair to see if they know, as they're the official repair providers.

Fair enough, I thought, so I gave them a ring.

MFR: Sir, you'll need to bring it in so we can assess to see if there's liquid or impact damage as these will affect the warranty.

Me: But it's only a little switch on the side.

MFR: Sir, we'll still need to check it. Our address is...

Me: Isn't that Auckland? I'm in Wellington.

[...]

That conversation didn't go anywhere near where I needed it to go, so I went into the flagship Vodafone store near work to see if they could help.

VF: It sounds like it should be covered under warranty. Ring this Apple hotline number and they'll give you a case number. Bring that in and we'll get the ball rolling.

I dutifully rang Apple and a very helpful chap told me that the damage would be covered under warranty, and gave me a case number for Vodafone to use. The next day, I took my phone and case number back to the store.

VF: I'm sorry mate, we can't do anything without proof of purchase.

Of course, I wished that they had told me this the day before (rassle frassle). That night, I trawled through boxes and eventually found the original paperwork I was supplied. Next day, back to the store I went.

VF: I'm sorry, this is your contract; we can't do anything without the actual proof of purchase.

Me: But Apple have all the details in their computer.

VF: Sorry, policy says we need the receipt. If you go to the store where you bought it, they'll be able to print your off a copy.

Wearily, I trudged up to Digital Mobile in Manners Mall, where I explained the situation to them.

DM: Oh, we've changed hands since you bought the phone and our records archived. We'll need to send a request to head office in Auckland for a copy, then we'll give you a call and you can come and pick it up.

Me: o_O

Luckily, he thought to ask if I had email (sure... a guy wearing a suit and holding two smartphones doesn'thave email). This means that once he receives the copy, he can forward it onto me, and I can go back to the Vodafone store.

This has been one long drawn-out process, which makes me want to drink. The light at the end of the tunnel is that I'll be given a brand-new iPhone 3G, as they don't do repairs on them. Until then, it's a game of waiting to see what the next blocker will be.

Lost Phone Saga

With my daughter recently having had a scalding accident, she and I have spent a couple of nights at Hutt Hospital (excellent service there!).  After we got home from the hospital, we discovered my wife had left her cellphone there.

At my urging, my wife rang Vodafone to request a bar be put on her phone so that it couldn't be used.  Unfortunately, it seemed that Vodafone were having system issues so we were redirected to the backup call centre in Egypt.  She explained the situation to the CSR, who was unable to put the bar on due to the issues.  My wife then asked for an assurance that we wouldn't be charged for calls made during the time that a bar was not on the phone.  The CSR stated that we would still be liable for any incurred charges.  My wife said that this shouldn't be the case, but the CSR started off on some sales script.  My wife interrupted to try to make her case and the CSR hung up on her!

(For me, this is the height of rudeness and is unforgivable.  I have actually raised this separately with people at Vodafone from my Twitter stream, and Vodafone in no way condones this behaviour.)

During this time, I had been trying to ring my wife's cellphone as we knew where it had been left.  About 15 minutes later, a woman rang our landline and said that her son had "found the phone".  As they weren't at the hospital any more, we have our suspicions as to whether the boy had pocketed it.  The woman wasn't at home, but did give us her landline and cell numbers.  She then promised to contact my wife when she did get home so we could arrange to go and pick it up.

By late evening, we hadn't heard anything so we rang Vodafone again to see if the systems were back up and we could get the bar put on.  We were able to get this done this time, so we asked if they could tell us if there'd been any activity on the phone.  The CSR told us that the last activity had been mid-afternoon, but couldn't tell us any more due to "privacy issues".  This surprised us as my wife had PIN-verified plus she confirmed three sets of personal details - why couldn't she know what's happened on her own phone?

(I have since tried registering my wife for My Vodafone so she could see if there was any activity listed in thee, but of course you need to enter a validation code that's sent via SMS to the phone.)

Its now the next afternoon, and we haven't heard from the woman with our phone.  Unfortunately, we've misplaced the piece of paper with her phone numbers on (as you do when you have kids), so we have no way of contacting her outside of ringing the phone, which isn't being answered.

The way I see it... if we haven't heard from her by Monday, we claim it as lost/stolen with the police so we can do an insurance claim, and get the phone disabled remotely.  Really can't think of any other solution.

Social Media Activism

A very interesting thing has been happening on the Internet this week. Avatars on social networking sites and blogs have been going black. The reason for this is an online protest led by the Creative Freedom Foundation in New Zealand against the upcoming implementation of a controversial legislation amendment for copyright protection.

What has made this protest interesting is the way and the speed that the message spread. Within hours of the campaign kicking off, the message had spread around the world and even people in other countries were taking part to show their support for their New Zealand peers. This was helped greatly by the endorsement and participation of Stephen Fry who, with over 200,000 followers on Twitter, likely has the largest reach in social networking. Promptly after Mr Fry publicly showed his support, a good percentage of his followers followed suit – several of these with thousands of supporters themselves.

Some people outside of New Zealand likely joined the campaign as some perceived Internet meme; however, many did their own reading into the reasons behind the campaign and joined it – either in support of New Zealand, or recognising that the same thing could happen to their own country. As more joined the cause, their social networking contacts also questioned what the story is, and the “spider’s web” grew.

I’m not sure if this is a first in social media, but this appears to have been the most effective. The end-results have yet to be determined as the campaign has not finished; however, this online success has lead to mainstream media from around the world covering the campaign and back-story, and the New Zealand politicians taking more serious notice of the issue. It has also led to “real world” actions such as protests and a petition being presented to the New Zealand government.

The way this campaign has proceeded would be like a “holy grail” for marketing and advertising firms. If they could leverage off this, they’d stand to get their message across to a very large market segment. For example, if Stephen Fry agreed to endorse Coke Zero, that endorsement would reach an international audience of over 200,000 potential customers and at a fraction of the cost that it would take to reach the same market through conventional methods. The same could also be done for political elections or activist causes like Greenpeace, but I doubt it would have the same effectiveness as a grassroots cause like this. In addition, I doubt that another campaign like this would have quite as much uptake for the same reasons that Internet memes die out.

I’m interested to see how this campaign closes out and how quickly the social networking sites return to normal. One thing is for sure, even if this is attempted again in the future for other causes, this campaign has been a trailblazer and New Zealanders appear to have led in innovation again.

Join the Internet Blackout - Protest Against Guilt Upon Accusation Laws in NZ

Join The New Zealand Internet BlackOut to protest against a law called Section92A due on February 28th that calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny.

Join thousands of New Zealanders already against this law by blacking out your Facebook photo, your websites, your Myspace pages, your Twitter account, in protest against this insane new law that may come into effect on February 28.



See more information on the Creative Freedom Foundation website.

Disabling iPhone Backups

I use two PCs to sync with my iPhone: my home PC for media and application syncing, and my work PC for contacts and calendar syncing. Understandably, it didn't make sense to me to back up my iPhone on two separate PCs - especially as the roaming profile on my work PC had a capacity of 30MB.

Apple in their infinite wisdom obviously didn't consider people syncing with multiple PCs, so didn't give us an option to disable backups. Therefore, I had to do my own investigations into how I could disable the backups running on my work PC. I did find a solution in the end - unfortunately I can't remember where I located this so I can't give out props for it. This solution involves editing the XML file containing your iTunes preferences...

• Search your computer for the iTunesPrefs.xml file. This is located in a hidden folder within your user profile in the Documents and Settings directory. For example, Vista users can locate this in C:\Users\user name\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes.
• Take a backup copy of the file (e.g. copy and paste).
• Open the original file in a text editor which shows formatting (i.e. WordPad rather than Notepad). This makes it a bit easier to see what you're doing.
• Search for the string <key>User Preferences</key>. Directly after the <dict> tag, enter the following text:

<key>DeviceBackupsDisabled</key>

<data>

dHJ1ZQ==

</data>

• Save and close the file. Your backups are now disabled on this PC.

Example Final Code:

<key>User Preferences</key>

<dict>

<key>DeviceBackupsDisabled</key>

<data>

dHJ1ZQ==

</data>