Not made for Africa

Over lunchtime, I had to rush out to drop off some papers at some lawyers in an area I have never been before so I set up the address onto the maps application of my Apple iPad Mini instead of my normal Galaxy Note 2 and halfway there the iPad stopped working and a warning came up “Temperature – iPad needs to cool down before you can use it”. What!

Yes I know it is Africa but it is in the middle of winter, for Santa’s sake. It is barely double figures on the thermometer and the iPad can perform. Uhmmm not cool, if you can’t take the heat iPad, stay out of Africa. In the end I had to take out my trusty Galaxy phone, take a photo of the striking Apple and then re-input the address onto Google Maps and continue without the iPad.

Doesn’t look so Good

And here readers, is Velile not looking so good. But why isn’t he looking so good you may ask. To answer I need to start with a joke, a Van der Merwe joke. You see in Ireland we have Kerryman jokes and here in South Africa we no different with our Van der Merwe jokes, although I must say I haven’t heard of a Van der Merwe joke since the 90s, we have Zuma jokes now. Sjoe so this is an old one then.

Van der Merwe saw a horse for sale in the local newspaper for only R100. So Van goes and checks the horse out. The horse looks okay so he asks the farmer, why is he selling the horse for so cheap. The farmer replied “’cause it doesn’t look so good”. Van thought this was strange because to him the horse looked fine but he paid the farmer the R100 and took the horse home. The next day Van stormed back to the farmer, and angrily demanded his money back because when he tried to ride the horse, he found out that the horse was blind. “I told you”, defended the farmer, “he doesn’t look so good”.

So now back to Velile, no he is not a horse but he doesn’t look so good. Early this year he had some operation to replace the corneas but is still having problems and now he needs even oversize text on his phone.

Slow Samsung

In the past, Samsung seemed to be the technology that was making a difference, but today after experiencing a very slow Samsung Smart Care Customer Service Centre in Constantia, Johanessburg, I found that I was badly mistaken.

On their wall, it is written "We’re here to make your Samsung experience even better". Ja sure, I now believe you, NOT. The queues were so long with no space left to sit. Due to the slow service at Samsung, we waited for nearly two hours before we were at the front of the queue.

• Is Samsung Professional? – Debatable
• Is Samsung Courteous? – Yes I will give them that
• Is Samsung Quick? – No never not even if your life was dependent on them
• Is Samsung Reliable? – I am starting to have my doubts because my phone battery is still not charging correctly

Are Sumsung mobile devices just useless? After querying why so many people are bringing their Samsungs in for repair? The answer that was given to me was that they just changed their opening hours and no longer operate on a Sunday. Okay that seems like going backwards to the Apartheid system of nothing opens on a Sunday due to the State’s Christian laws. Not only slow but progressively backward thinking.

23 Days

23 days, yes it took South African cellar company Cell C, 23 days to replace the screen of my Samsung Galaxy S3. A friend of mine had his phone, also a S3, cracked in the same way as mine. And he took it to the Samsung store in Clearwater Mall and had his phone returned to him in 14 days.

So what did I learn about Cell C from this terrible experience. Firstly Cell C's Call Centre was a horrible experience from the get go. Secondly never believe Cell C when they say anything plus many more mistruths added to the other confused deliberate lies, we are busy upgrading our network and you should experience a marked improvement by July. And the same we are busy upgrading our network and you should experience a marked improvement by September, yeah right.

It will take a phenomenal miracle to trust Cell C again.

Samsung

Starting early this morning and just ploughing through the work didn’t leave me much time to think about taking photos for my blog. Just before I had to leave this evening, my blog popped into my head. Looking quickly around for something to photograph, the thin red line around my new 23 inch Samsung LED monitor that I got just over a week ago caught my eye. Expecting the light to move like KITT the high tech crime fighting car used in Knight Rider or one of the Terminator cyborgs with its faint red glow but it only the Samsung monitor.

After another busy day at work behind the computer screens and the week is already half way through. Warning tomorrow Zombies are preparing to walk the streets. Are you prepared to fight for your survival?