April 10, 2007 at 1:03 pm · Authored by Ewan · Filed under Devices, Mobile

I had a wicked massage the other day at the hotel before doing a ton of work in the afternoon. The therapist who supervised and performed the treatment was called Holly. We had a little chat at the start of the session. She asked what I’d been up to. I briefly narrated my trying-to-get-a-Nokia-from-T-Mobile experience.

She told me she’d just got a new handset.

Ahh hah, I thought. Can I guess? I thought, perhaps, it might be the Shine. But I didn’t want to freak her out by guessing. So I asked her the question and she confirmed.

“Ah, d’ya like it?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” she said, “It’s a great phone, just I think I’ve got a faulty one.”
Uh oh, I thought.
“Now and again it won’t switch on… and…,” she explained.
“That’s not good, you should get it replaced! I reviewed it, it’s a wicked handset.”

She agreed. She really, really liked the mirrored screen. She wasn’t new to LG either. Her last phone was the Chocolate, which she had for 6 months. However she swapped to the Shine because a) she liked the look fo it and b) she was allowed to upgrade her handset at no cost by Carphone Warehouse for some reason.

I think this might have been related to her insurance. I’m not quite sure. You see, she went on to tell me about the insurance package she’d signed up for.

“It’s 30 pounds every four months,” she said.
“Right, you know the handset is about £220 to buy?”

Bit of silence on her side.

“30 pounds every four months.. hmmm. you could probably buy a new one in two years, with the insurance you’re paying..”

A bit more silence.

£30 every four months is £7.50 a month. You can get some price plans at that. In fact, for double that, Three will give you 500 minutes a month!

I think, but I can’t be entirely sure, that Holly said she’d bought this special insurance which allowed her to upgrade every 6 months — only, she was a bit put out that ‘they’ve changed it’ so that you CAN still do this, but with a £30 charge each time.

Hmmm. That sort-of makes sense.

She’s had her handset five weeks — that makes her one of the first with a commercially available Shine in the UK, I think. I reckoned she should take it back to Carphone Warehouse and see if they’ll replace it. Five weeks though… they’ll probably do a ‘30 days’ or ‘7 days sorry’ thing. The handset shouldn’t be having those sort of problems though. All the Shines I’ve looked at — and in particular the one I (was) using, have been very reliable.

Which reminds me, I’ve got more Shine news to publish.