Framtiden nu

I spend alot of time testing mobile services using SIM-cards bought from all around the world. Some of them are prepaid, some of them are postpaid. There is just one universal truth abouth them: the operator online services to manage them universally suck.

This is a question to every single operator out there: Why do you make my life so difficult? I just want to spend money on your services.

I´m starting to believe operators don’t actually want my money.

Some pain points I have:

- Atrcious process to top up SIM-cards. SMS PIN-codes back and forth, passwords sent my snail mail, three day waiting to get access to my online account. Why can´t I just type in my phone number and my PayPal account and have a SIM-card topped up?

- Impossible to see my online purchase history. This one is even more crazy – the web interfaces the operators had back in 2005 were bad. The ones in 2011 does not seem to have improved, in fact they are worse! And typically they are buried somewhere deep down on operator web sites so that you can´t find them. Oh – and they keep switching the URL:s around so that you can´t bookmark it.

- Data roaming for prepaid is still spotty. I just can´t wrap my head around why it is so difficult to solve. Or the fact is – it is a solved problem, it´s just that the solutions are buggy and work 50% of the time. (And don´t get me started on the cost of data roaming that makes it an unusable service for any  normal prepaid customer)

- Money magically disappearing from SIM-cards. It seems to be a well established truth that on prepaid cards you have to live with money sometimes disappearing without any explanation. I´m sure there is an explanation for it, it´s just that the operator don´t care about explaining it to their customers.  E.g. someone calling the voicemail service and me being forced to pay the roaming-tax for travelling with my phone. Imagine if money just started disappearing from my PayPal account without explanation!

I was on the phone with Vodafone Germany who refused to explain why money was missing from my card. The only thing they could say was that I was probably subscribed to some Premium SMS service. How´s that for an explanation?

- Impossible to find the price of a service. Here´s what I want: an online tool where I can check what it will cost to use a SIM-card aborad. For example – lets say I have a prepaid card with operator A and is travelling abroad and roaming with operator B, how much will my I pay for an SMS, MMS and data? Getting this questions answered seems more difficult than solving who murdered JFK.

And don´t get me started on customer support reps that can´t actually solve any issues.

Whew..glad to get that of my chest. I feel so much better now. I love you all!