Re: [78attendees] Lessons we can take from the Internet connectivity fiasco in Maastricht...

[Chris Morrow <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 4:17 PM, Ted Lemon <[e-mail]> wrote:
<snip good stuff about saving time by having a kiosk>
> Because this IETF was not near a city center with shops that sell 3G cards, it was at least an hour excursion to go to such a shop, sometimes two, depending on how the buses were running.   I wound up doing this four times during this visit.   It had to be during prime time - 8am to 6pm - because shops don't keep late hours here (nor do I blame them).   And at the end of it, because I do not live in the netherlands, and do not have the ability to receive SMS messages at a Netherlands number, the free offers didn't work, I spent hours on the phone with T-mobile, and after buying two SIM cards, one from Vodaphone and one from T-mobile, wound up with one disabled SIM card (Vodaphone) and one SIM card with a starting balance of 2.50 Euro.   I can't add credit to the T-mobile card because my credit card isn't accepted because I can't put a U.S. address on my T-mobile account.   Total cost so far: 25 Euro.

So, a note for the vodafone purchasers (who apparently failed as I
did)... our intrepid googler steve padgett noted that vodafone has a
sim for 7.50 that gets '30 days free internet'. I suspect this is what
Ted bought, it is what I bought.

The store folks didn't pass along to me, but did to spadgett, the
flyer which says:
o put the sim in your phone
o SMS 'Zorgeloos internet aan' to 4000
o rejoice
(paraphrased)

So, my sim was promptly 'deactivated' (minus about 1400 sms messages
from their automated system...suckers!) after ~1day. After getting a
tad miffed I called:
   1200
  option 1 'top up'
  option 9 'register to top up with credit card'
  talk to nice customer service person explain the above "yes, I only
ever want internet, no phone calls, pls check the records i used up
all my credit with internet. Could you see your way through to
re-setting my account and enabling the 'Zorgeloos internet aan' for
me? "

The nice support person did this (to my workmate wkumari as well).
rejoice internetz again!

-chris