The new BeyondWireless phone has been activated and seems to be working fine. The guy in the “porting” department called me as promised to let me know the number from the old TracFone phone has been moved to the new phone. (Bye-bye TracFone, you will not be missed!)
He also activated it for me, which saves me the trouble of doing that myself. All I had to do was use the 36-minute prepaid card they provided free with the phone to add minutes.
The process for adding minutes for this phone was a lot easier than it was for TracFone. I just had to punch in a total of about 16 or so digits and hit “call” and a few seconds later, the display informed me that my minutes had been successfully added.
The procedure with TracFone was a real pain and I used to dread it when one of the phones got close to it’s airtime expiration date because I knew I had to go to their website and sit there punching in a long series of numbers about 4 or 5 times as I followed along from one web page to the next. I don’t miss that tedium!
The phone I opted for with the new service was the cheapest one they had since we are all pretty basic cell phone users and we don’t need all kinds of fancy options. We just want to be able to make or receive a simple phone call on it once in a while.
I could be more pleased with the phone. It’s a Siemens S56 and it seems to work OK, but I don’t like the user interface. It’s not terribly intuitive and the owner’s manual is terrible.
I wish I could understand how so many owner’s manuals and “help” files end up so poorly written. Human beings have been using the written word for a very long time, you would think just about everyone could get it right by now.
I’m not talking about grammar or punctuation or spelling here. I’m talking about just wanting to find out how to do a certain thing with the phone and consulting the manual to find out how. A true exercise in frustration.
There’s no question in my mind that I could do a better job of creating documentation for these various gadgets in our lives than the morons that are currently doing it.
Anyway, I’ve had nothing but Nokia phones up until now and I much prefer them to the Siemens. Much more intuitive to use and easier to use.
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