Mobile phones – and how to survive with them

As I was spending roughly £10.00 per month on my pay-as-you-go mobile phone, and both my daughters had posh smart phones which made me envious, I decided to upgrade to pay monthly.

Vodafone (I’m limited to Vodafone on account of there being no other signal is this remote area of the British Isles) had a good offer of a free Blackberry for £15.00 per month.

Sounded too good to miss, so I went into the Vodafone shop in Norwich to speak to a real person. Chris was a very nice young man who patiently answered all my questions and offered me the first two months free.

Excellent.

It’s a lovely little phone, and downloads all my emails too (whether I want it to or not.)

I’ve been trying to get onto the Vodafone website ever since, to check up on whether I’m within my monthly allowance. Today – for the first time – I actually managed to get on and see my account.

To my horror I discover I’m somehow a business – how did that happen? My bill this month was £15.38 – what was the extra .38 for? And they’ve added on a hefty £7.00 for business insurance!

To add insult to injury, a call I made from Norwich to home (and we live in Norwich) was charged, even though I was nowhere near my limit of 100 minutes. An 0800 call was charged too – also within the 100 minutes.

Can anyone explain any of this to me? I have emailed Vodafone, but without much confidence that I’ll get my queries answered.

So my final question is, how do you survive mobile phones?