26.10.11

Blackberry and Rogers - a tag team of fuck ups

Driving home from picking up my daughter last night the rain was ridiculous. I decided to avoid the 401 and take the back way home from my mums.  I do this pretty much anytime there's bad weather. I just find people on the 401 don't think in crappy weather.

Part way home I hit a pretty massive puddle. Puddle might be an understatement actually, it way more like a small lake. I started to hydroplane slightly and found my self stuck in a bit of a soft ditch made by the rain and muddy roadside. I was stuck.

Not a big deal. It sucked for sure to realise at 11:30pm I was going to be waiting for a tow truck to come yank me out but worse things have happened.

Luckily I had my trusty blackberry, I thought. I have an old blackberry curve, I won't get into how rogers stuck me with it but I've never liked the damn thing. It freezes, shuts down randomly and has constant functionality issues. Having taken it to rogers numerous times, I had basically accepted that this is how blackberrys ran and that I was SOL. I would be doing battery pulls multiple times a day until I could afford a new phone.

So I went to call for help and I had the spinning clock of death. Annoyed, I flipped the phone, pulled the battery and waited for it to reboot.

5 Minutes

Phone loads

Immediately freezes

Fuck

Pull battery

Wait another 5 minutes

Phone loads

Frozen again

I did this 4 times before I realised I was screwed. Back country road, middle of the night, sleeping toddler, pouring rain, stuck car... NO PHONE!

Very few cars come down the road I was on at night, not to mention the safety factor of standing in the road flagging down cars in the dark and the rain.

I suppose I could have thrown the blackberry at them. Make the damn thing slightly useful.

So I see approaching lights jump out of the car only to end up being soaked by the splash the car made through the puddle. Brilliant. Now I'm cold, wet, stranded and trying ANOTHER battery pull on my useless phone.

Of course, it fails.

Now im contemplating the fact that I am going to have to bundle up my toddler and walk to the nearest house, and knock on their door in the middle of the night while looking like a drowned rat. This sounds both safe and practical to me. Dark road, rain, strange houses. Its the stuff true crime novels and front page news is made of.

Then a truck stops (also front page news worthy but at least I'm not dragging Monkey out in the rain). Two men hop out and offer their help pushing me out. I almost cried. I am so grateful to them for helping a stranger on a dark stormy night.

So now I'm mad. Rogers and blackberry tell me my phone is fine but the one time I need it for an emergency its fucking useless. This happens all the time with this phone. How can this be "fine"???

I will never trust a blackberry or rogers again. If we had gone off the road into ditch and been injured we would have been in trouble.

I love BBM but I'm swapping to anything but a blackberry and anyone but rogers as soon as I can. I recommend you do the same.

1 comment:

  1. OMG chick, I cannot imagine being in that situation. I wish I knew your back road route.....I am stuck in that traffic on the 401 twice daily.

    Enough to drive you nutty - and yes people go crazy once a drop of rain or a single snowflake hit their windscreens!

    The last two nights have been HORRENDOUS!

    I am glad you are safe :) Thank God for people like those truckers!

    ReplyDelete

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