Service offers online configuration of mobile phones

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 07 May 2009 07:58

IT Industry - Strategy

According to Configuremyphone's press release  email settings from email service providers only are available, some 7000 of them, but there is no indication of such a limitation when you try and input an email address.

After email address I was asked for email address, username and password. That would probably confuse most people as username is usually just what appears before @ in their email address. And if that does not confuse them, having username presented back as 'password' probably would.

But the worst part comes next. The system says: "You should have now received your settings. The PIN for your settings is 1234. The handset will display 1 new message." However, you don't see one new message, you see three: the first asking you to reply indicating you are willing to pay $3.50, the second confirming that you have paid and the third being the real message.

Trouble is, while receipt of the others was almost instantaneous this all-important third message took about five minutes, by which time I had called the customer service number in the second message to find out what was going on. That Australian number routes to a UK office, which was closed. The message did give an email address, but not with enough care to ensure it could be accurately transcribed.

Does it work? That I cannot tell you because having been stung with a $129 data charge last month for a 10Meg download that I have no idea how I initiated I have disabled all data services on my cellphone, but that's another story.