Deafinitely Girly gets broadband

Guess what?!

I have broadband!!!!!!!

*insert image of hell freezing over here

I know, I always said I would never get broadband if I had to get a phoneline, too, but those lovely people at O2 cracked my resolve and finally I have joined every other household in the UK and got connected.

When researching the best broadband deals, I naturally found myself gravitating towards Virgin Media – they had hounded me with junk leaflets promising fibre optic broadband at amazing speeds in my area, and the biggest attraction with this is that you don't need a phone line to get it.

However, after a bit of research, I discovered the massive lack of subtitles on Virgin Catch-up TV, which quite frankly is a disgrace when even iPlayer on the iPhone can manage to shoehorn them in.

I could of course have opted for just Virgin Fibreoptic Broadband, but do you know what? There is very little incentive to do this – none in fact. There are no deals, no offers, nothing of the glossy promises given to those who want to take out the whole lot with Virgin. 

Couple that with my experience of the stroppiest ever Virgin representative on Twitter, and well, you can see why I struck them off my list.

O2 however, have wised up to this Twitter lark and that is how they got my custom. They're polite, courteous and get back to you within a few hours maximum. Nothing seems to be too much trouble – of course they could be sticking pins in an effigy of me behind the scenes, but up front, they're wonderful.

Abs – the person who held my hand through the whole thing – was wonderful.

And the deal?

Well, I have a phoneline – but it was only £7.50 a month, which rose to £9 before I'd even had it installed, but it gave me an excuse to pop this – a freebie from many moons ago – on my bookcase in the living room and, even if I will never EVER use it, it still looks rather fab.

But what about the broadband? Well, I got six months free because I was an O2 customer, and when there was a balls-up due to my address not existing, Abs sorted the whole thing out and rearranged my engineer visit to set the whole thing up – and he took this so seriously that he actually set up my wireless box for me, too!!

What's more, because I now have wireless at home, I can reduce the data package on my iPhone, which will all save the money needed to go towards my monthly broadband costs.

I've had broadband for nearly a week now, and if I'm honest, I'm not sure how I managed this long without it. I can chat to The Rents on FaceTime, say goodnight to Big Bro who lives in ClogLand and try my hand at lipreading my gorgeous little nephews, too. I can surf the internet to my heart's desire, watch all the catch-up TV I want – with fully functioning amazing subtitles – and generally do everything you lot have probably been doing for at least the last five years. Even better, it was SO easy to set up with the only frustration being the length of time I had to wait to have my phoneline connected. 

As companies go, I don't think I can fault O2 right now – and as the MASTER of complaining, that's saying something. It's a company that quite literally keeps me connected to the world, from unlimited text messages on my phone and an on-the-go data package to broadband and Wi-Fi, without all these, I'd be back to the 90s – back to asking people to help me do things, book things, find out things; back to wondering what was going on when I was out and about, missing out on stuff and generally feeling very isolated.

And for the price of a phoneline, I don't think that's a bad deal, do you?

Deaf girly loves O2!

This week I have praise for O2!

I know, I was shocked to be writing that sentence, too, but after yet another hideous iPhone bill due to my ability to go over the 500 free text messages included in my plan, I decided enough was enough.

I had a look online at the upgrade/downgrade options and got completely confused before emailing O2 for advice. Somehow my email must have gone twice as one person contacted me and said pop into a store to discuss things, and the other person, despite my email explaining my deafness, suggested I call customer services.

Hmmmm

So on Saturday I went to a central London O2 store and the god-of-reducing-your-phone-bill gave me Sam!

Now, I'm pretty sure my love for Sam is not mutual as I asked more questions in the 30 minutes I was there than he probably gets in a week, but he answered them all with charm and grace.

I explained to him my bill issue, and he saw it with his own shocked eyes when he called my details up. I then explained to him the 'dropping my phone down the loo' issue and that although I'm due an upgrade, my phone is not yet a year old so it would be a sheer indulgence to get another one – particularly having paid a £150 insurance excess on my first one.

Anyway, back to Sam. He was brilliant! He recommended I move to a rolling sim-only contract for just £10.50 with a data bolt on of £10 and the best thing? I get unlimited texts. I lamented about the lack of unlimited data but he showed me that this was something I actually didn't need and that if it was readily available to all O2 customers then everyone's network speed would be slower.

He also explained to me that as I am on a rolling contract, I can upgrade my phone any time to a shiny iPhone 4S but that this buys me some time to wear this phone out and for the newer model to go down in price.

I also cancelled my insurance (saving me another £15) because if I lose this phone, it will be cheaper to just upgrade than pay another £150 excess.

In all, the lovely Sam managed to shave £50 off my phone bill and while this isn't great news for O2 in terms of income in the short term, in the long term it has dramatically reduced the chances of me changing mobile providers.

What was even better was that Sam, noticing how slow my iPhone was showed me that if you double click the bottom button it brings up a base bar of all the apps that are open. I did not know about this. And that meant that my phone had all its apps open all the time – and had done for the last year.

I left that O2 shop very, very happy. Happy that the stress of the expense of my iPhone bill had been dramatically reduced. Happy that my faith in O2 had once again been restored, and happy that when I do decide to upgrade and get a calling plan to suit me, I know just the man to ask

Thanks O2. You did good!

Life without my iPhone

So, anyone who has seen me in since my birthday, will know that I broke my beloved iPhone in a moment of clumsiness as it slipped out my back pocket and down the loo.

*sob

Seriously, I think I sucked all the air out of my flat when I realised what I had done and watched my main port of contact with EVERYONE disappear in a little fizzle of the screen.

And since then, everything’s been a pain.

Firstly, it turns out I had the wrong insurance in spite of the fact I used my big amplified phone at work to call and check and asked the lady on the other end of the phone to confirm twice it was OK to keep my existing insurance with my new phone.

Then, when Pa spoke to O2 to try and sort things on Sunday, they told him to call back on Monday. Monday wasn’t good enough in my book, so Jenny M rang back and the person she got was very accommodating. Although, he broke the news of the £150 insurance excess, in addition to my new, more expensive monthly insurance payments.

At this point, I looked at my generously given 30th-birthday cheques sat on the mantelpiece and realised quickly what I was going to be spending them on.

Then, Jenny M was told that iPhone 3GS phones were out of stock – evidentially I am not the only person throwing them in the toilet. But Jenny M was also told that I would be texted when the stock arrived and informed of a delivery date.

However, in the interim, I had a million questions for O2 – they really must love me there – and so emailed the Disability Customer Care email with all of them.

No reply.

So then, I got two texts through in two minutes offering me two different delivery dates.

By this time, I was totally confused; so I cranked up my work phone’s amplifier and took the plunge to call O2 again, with my colleague on stand-by to help if need be. The first guy I spoke to was lovely, he then put me through to an insurance guy who was also lovely and said that I could choose a delivery date. So I replied to the first text message, but being a Blackberry handset that I am using at the moment, the texts were all grouped together so then I had a panic about which date I had confirmed for…

So I rang O2 again and got the most wonderful man on the other end of the phone. After the 50th pardon, I apologised for my hearing loss and he replied, ‘You can say pardon as much as you need to.’ along with a whole host of other reassuring things to help put me at ease during the stressful process of making the phone call.

And while we were nattering, hey presto! another text came through from O2 Insure informing me that the first text had been an error and I could only have the later delivery date.

This was fine, I just wanted to know when to be around to collect my new beloved iPhone.

I have been documenting my daily life without my iPhone on Twitter, not least because I cannot get over how much I relied on it to get me through the day. From the Tube App, which would have been very useful in yesterday’s chaos to Run Keeper to track my run home from work.

I haven’t been able to write my blog on the bus to work in the morning and have no Twitter feed until I log in at work. I have only been able to communicate by text, so had a very long-winded chat with Snowboarding Boy the other day about our dinner arrangements that normally could have been sorted easily on MSN. The list is endless…

Then today, the lovely Twitter peeps at O2 noticed my plight and DM’d me to find out what was going on. And they’re going to check that my iPhone is going to arrive on Monday and that everything is OK. Wonderful service as always from the O2 Twitter peeps, so thanks guys.

I finally feel as though things will actually work out… but just make sure, does anyone know where I can buy a waterproof iPhone case that’s drop resistant, and generally Deafinitely Girly resistant?

If so, drop me a line, as this is not a week I want to repeat again any time soon!

My deafness wishlist

This morning on the bus to work, I saw a friend of mine who works for O2. He’s a great guy and always listens to my O2 rants with patience and helpful suggestions. So it was fab to let him know about my recent success with contacting O2 via the press office team on Twitter.

We chatted about technology for a while and this eventually turned into useful apps for my iPhone in terms of my deafness and other things I’d like to make life easier in my Hard-of-Hearing World.

When we were talking though, my mind went quite blank, but now I’ve had a chance to think a little bit more about it, it’s made me resolve to start compiling my Deafness Wishlist – things I want changed or services I’d like to see.

I mean I know I write about them often, but perhaps if I put them all in one place, it’ll make it easier when I bump into VIPs on the bus…

So here we go:

1. Subtitles at all cinemas for more than just one movie, at one time, once a week.
2. Accessibility email addresses for all major companies so we don’t have to call.
3. Email or online booking in all doctors’ surgeries and dentists.
4. Deaf plates for bicycles – they have these in Holland and I have one, although English drivers won’t have a clue what it means.
5. Subtitled announcements in train and tube stations.
6. All tube trains to have subtitled announcements so when stuck in a tunnel, we know what’s going on – the District line already has this.
7. Subtitled options on all movies and TV shows on iTunes.
8. Subtitled on the iPhone BBC iPlayer app.
9. Prettier vibrating alarm clocks.
10. An iPhone app that converts speech to text live – so if you’re in a meeting or at a non-subtitled, play it translates it for you.
11. An internet provider that gives deaf people a discount for their internet even if they don’t take a phone line.
12. All extras on DVDs to be subtitled.
13. Better live subtitles from the BBC. Am sick of reading ‘Urine for a nice sunny day’ when the weather forecast begins.
14. An app that links my iPhone to the unhearable things in my flat – such as the fire alarm, cooker alarm, door alarm, so it’s all in one useful place.
15. Birds that tweet lower! OK, this is one for Mother Nature, but I’d love to hear a robin sing just once.
16. Deaf-aware quiz masters in pubs. Admittedly I am normally very lucky with this, but when they’re bad, they’re very, very bad.
17. Subtitled exercise DVDs! Would love, love, love this as it’s quite hard to lipread someone when you’re bobbing about on the spot.
18. Ways to alter the pitch of the warning noises in my car.
19. More subtitled comedy shows – I know the Soho Theatre did one recently, but I want to be able to see any comedian and for some tech-savvy person to work out a way to subtitle them efficiently.
20. Deaf-friendly store alarms – am sick of setting them off and being pursued down the street by security, completely unaware I’ve done anything!

And that’s just the beginning. Please add you own at the end of this list, or let me know if you know something I don’t, and let’s see how many get ticked off by the end of this year. If just one or two could be achieved, I reckon I could live without a tenor-voiced robin – for now, anyway!!

Evolving deaf services

Well, we have a new Prime Minister! And he may look young now, but give him time and soon the curse of the PM will get him and his face will slowly start sliding down his body.

Seriously though, watching all the news, I couldn't help wondering that, if Gordon Brown had come across the way he did during his ‘Bye-Bye’ speech yesterday during his entire time as PM, he might have actually succeeded in gaining enough Labour votes to win this General Election.

There was something rather lovely about him.

Bravo to his speech writer I say.

What’s great for me during all this election stuff is how I’ve been able to catch snippets and thoughts of others that I would usually miss out on in general conversation, through Twitter. It’s given me a new perspective of what’s been happening, especially during live TV broadcasts when the subtitles aren’t that reliable.

And better still, because I choose who I follow on Twitter, it means I have a select narrative forming – much the same as if you’re conversing with friends. It’s great!

It’s things like this that remind me just how much technology has changed for the better for me. I remember when The Rents had to spend over £200 on a video recorder that played and recorded subtitles on the TV. But even then you had to hope that the show was actually subtitled in the first place. I also remember trawling through Blockbuster with my friends trying to find a captioned movie. Sometimes there weren’t any we all wanted to watch, and I’d be left with just the pictures.

And then there’s the theatre – OK so there aren’t many subtitled performances, but there are some, which is a long way from where it was when I was doing English A-level. I remember going to see Macbeth and almost wishing he’d murder me too, as I was so bored of sitting through hours of inaudible Shakespeare! I thought I must be terrible uncultured to be so bored – when really I was just deaf.

And now, this year for the first time, The Globe is captioning things – ‘Bring on Shakespeare’ is now something I can finally say!

I also remember buying Smash Hits and Fast Forward magazines religiously just so I could cut the song lyrics out and learn then to prevent embarrassing and wrong renditions of Kylie songs. Now, I can get lyrics online at the drop of the hat, and have an application on my iPhone that I play my iPod through and the lyrics for each song are automatically brought up!

Amazing!

It’s all this that gives me hope, when I discover things like the iPlayer for the iPhone to be lacking subtitles, or a lack of subtitles on iTunes. Only recently, I discovered a programme you can download that adds subtitles to things – and while it’s all gobbledegook to me now, I fully intend to research it to see how it can help me.

I’m incredibly excited for the day where I can attend the theatre at the drop of the hat and know there’ll be subtitles, see films with subtitles at any time, any day and any week and buy movies for my iPhone safe in the knowledge that I’ll have the same extras as a DVD and be able to switch on captions.

I wonder, sometimes optimistically if there’ll eventually be a day when I come to write my daily blog and realise that I have nothing bad to say about services for deaf and hard of hearing peeps – imagine that?! Which is why I am going to continue to complain to companies like the BBC and O2, who I think could be doing better, until they do, do better. After all, it can’t hurt, can’t it? And maybe if enough of us do, then these companies will eventually take note.

Fingers crossed, eh! Fingers crossed!

When train subtitles go wrong

Today's blog comes from the train on the way home from The Rents' house. I had a lovely weekend with them both – although they've both been quite ill recently, Ma with a chest infection, and Pa with pneumonia.

As a result we had a quiet weekend of chilling out, watching cheesy movies and catching up. It was perfick.

This morning though, my train almost gave me a heart attack! After a particularly speedy journey to the station, I was able to just make, by running, the earlier train. I didn't even bother to look at the details of the platform, I just jumped on the train waiting to leave and sat down.

And so it set off. Then, there was a tinny announcement on the tannoy that I couldn’t hear, so I read the subtitles scrolling on the screen and it welcomed me aboard a train going somewhere completely different!

Um...

I sat for a moment contemplating the situation and then decided to ask the guy next door me, who confirmed I was, thankfully on a London-bound train and the subtitles were in fact wrong!

Phew! I’ve never been so pleased in my life that subtitles were actually incorrect!

*teehee!

Anyway, I finally have 3G coverage on my iPhone! Awaiting me at The Rents' was new SIM card from O2, with no instructions whatsoever. It didn't work. So I decided to visit an O2 shop instead. There the staff were lovely and explained that the SIM card probably hadn't been set to my phone. They also did not disagree with my opinions of O2 online customer service and in 15 minutes flat had sorted my new SIM!

Utterly brilliant!

Now I know I have brilliant contacts at the press office, a disabilities email and helpful staff in O2 shops, I feel much more reassured that I will now get the service I am paying for…

Maybe it is easier being deaf after all!

The problem with deaf customer service

Apologies for my silence this week – I’ve been recovering from my bank holiday weekend, which included my running race.

I completed it slowly and steadily, without stopping, which was quite an achievement as it was pouring with rain and freezing cold. But the camaraderie between the runners was fantastic and Tigger stayed by my side as promised throughout.

Now, I’ve just got work on getting faster – this morning I had a jolly good go at it, but my egg timer failed so I have no idea whether I was quicker or not! Ho hum.

Anyway, I’m back to an old bugbear today.

O2!

As regular readers will know, I have an iPhone, and the recent upgrade procedure – done completely online with no human contact whatsoever – demonstrated that in some areas O2 have got better in making it possible for deaf people to use its services. However, what I didn’t factor in was that, as I have been a loyal – and long-suffering – customer with them for almost 10 years, my SIM card was too old to receive 3G coverage.

I thought it was my iPhone that was the problem, so spent my entire lunch hour queuing at the Apple store only to be told that lack of 3G was due to the fact that my service provider still appears as BT Genie! Remember those days?

So, I went onto O2’s website and had a good hunt around through the FAQs to see if this was fixable online – but it wasn’t. I had a look at the contact us section, which features lots of phone numbers for all sorts of reasons, and one email us section. I even bit the bullet and called O2 – and after 10 minutes of saying pardon, asking the call centre peep to repeat himself, reminding him of my hearing loss and trying to request yes or no answers, I gave up, red faced, conscious of the fact that once again I was hitting a brick wall with what should be a disability-friendly company.

So, counting to 10, I filled in the convoluted email form and sent it off. And guess what? They will endeavour to get back to me within 24 hours. When people on the phone get an instant service. How is that fair?!

It just makes me cross that after years and years of technological developments, O2 does not have a designated email for hard of hearing people – or if it does, it certainly doesn’t advertise it.

Surely there must be someone in O2 thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, this can’t be fair – a crap service for people who can’t use the phone?!’ but then, seeing as they’re a phone company, this is probably not the case.

But what I want companies like O2 to recognise is that it is more than just a phone provider now – and for a deaf person like me, my phone is my lifeline – I can book tickets on the internet, find out train times, send emails, chat on MSN, text, search for traffic issues when I am stuck in a jam, check London travel situations while on the move, and even, when stuck on an overland tube, find out if there are any problems on the line. All this, is invaluable to me – it saves me from trying to communicate, it enables me to build relationships, keep in touch and maintain friendships. And when it goes wrong, I literally feel as though I have lost a large area of my world.

To have no way of contacting O2 quickly to sort this out is a big problem for me.

Now, I know that I could cancel O2 and go elsewhere, but guess what? You need the phone for that. And also, apparently, I can go into an O2 shop and sort things like my SIM card out – even though I am an online customer. And I have done this on occasions, but it reall does seem to depend on the friendliness of the shop staff as to whether they can actually help you. So with the whole SIM card issue, an O2 shop is going to be my next port of call. But I’ve heard a rumour that I may be charged for a new one.

Charged for 10 years of loyalty!?

Well that makes sense, doesn’t it.

But, it shouldn’t be relevant whether or not I can go into an O2 shop for service. I am an O2 online customer. I should be able to get a decent service from my provider. I mean, I certainly pay enough.

It’s not rocket science, I don’t think. O2 need to give deaf people the same service they give hearing people. And if that’s really not possible, then deaf people should get a reduced tariff as an apology for substandard customer service – plenty of other companies offer just that, from theatres to travel.

The 24-hour window of the email response I have been promised by O2 has almost run out – I’m hoping I hear from someone. I’m hoping that they’ll tell me that a new, improved 3G-friendly SIM is in the post to me, free of charge.

I’m also hoping I win the lottery and achieve a 7-minute mile by the end of the month. And right now the latter wishes are looking more feasible.

UPDATE: Oh the power of Twitter! Through it, I contacted O2 and I have been assurred that I can go in store and get a new SIM for free and that I will soon have an email back in reply to the one I sent yesterday. It was so nice to actually have a conversation with a real person from O2, that I got carried away and asked them about an easier way to get in touch with the online peeps. I was forwarded a link about access for all, but it only gives phone options or the email form that I filled in yesterday and have yet to have a reply from. So I am not sure how this helps. So I said that – and it's gone quiet for now. I will keep you posted!