Mobile phone trouble update

The telephone was returned to me yesterday with the latest firmware loaded. I was still unable to transfer my contacts from my old Motorola to this one, although I tried at least three alternative methods - iSync, dragging the addresses to the Bluetooth icon and exporting the v-card. No luck.

I spoke to the assistant in the store who was most helpful and he recommended possible replacements - some Nokias - but advised that I check on the Apple and Nokia web sites, which I did, and confirmed that the Nokia products have iSync compatibility. In fact, Nokia have good Apple support. I left the V8 behind in the shop, expecting to be able to collect an exchange next day.

Then I got a telephone call telling me that my handset was ready for collection and was handed back the Motorola. I made a long call to Carphone Warehouse customer services from the shop explaining that I would not accept the item as it is useless to me. I have no intention of keying in 200 contacts and can not in fact physically do so as of course some of the contacts have letters Ä, Ö and Å which are missing until a new language pack is loaded, which also does not seem to be as straightforward as with the previous Motorolas. It is not unreasonable to expect to be able to transfer a contact list and diary from one mobile to the next by some means or other when both phones are of the same make and the new is sold as a successor to the old.

So I made the shop take the phone and got a receipt. In the meantime I hae signed up to a contract but am without the new handset which forms part of that contract. I am not getting what I have paid for. As I originally returned the handset within four days of purchase, it was well within the time limit for exchange, but agreed to try it again after it had been checked by a technician and reloaded with the latest version of the firmware. I have wasted the best part of four days fiddling about with it and talking to people on the telephone, as well as having had to deal with the unpleasant manager of the Churchill Square shop.

Unless the matter is dealt with in the next couple of days I am also no longer in a position to actually collect the handset and deal with the task of setting it up as I am going away very soon for several months.

The moral? Perhaps, avoid getting a new mobile phone if the old one is OK. But the guy in the shop was helpful and put me on a cheaper tariff, though I did not need to sign up for a new contract to have done this. The problem was not his fault - he assumed that is the phone was described as a successor to the V3, it would have had at least all the same features and then some, instead of less. Also, it sounds as if Motorola has gone to the bad again, as quite apart from the compatibility problems, the software is not easy to use. Even if Carphone Warehouse does nothing at all about it and leaves me with a new contract and no new phone, this trouble will have cost them all the profit they should have made, so perhaps they should be more careful about what they sell.