So I purchased a Huawei E587 mobile wifi hotspot to connect up the iPads and stuff on the go, and what a great gadget. Nicely secure, fast, pretty good battery life, came with 2GB of data ... what's not to like.
The top-up process - that's what not to like.
Checking the usage last week in the admin interface, it was getting pretty close to the 2GB mark so I went online to the Telecom website and topped it up by $50, which should have been good for another 2GB. The top up web page just gives you the option of adding money to the mobile number, but I didn't think that was any big deal as it's clearly a data modem - it plainly can't use a voice or text plan.
So everything was fine, right up until Telecom booted the modem off the Internet as the original 2GB was all used up. Just brilliant.
So I called 123, waited half an hour to be bounced around a few people in the Philippines trying to get the $50 credit actually added to the plan - apparently it had been fully consumed in about ten seconds flat by being allocated to "casual data" - and then part way through the process the call was simply cut off because it was after 9pm.
Before the call was terminated with extreme prejudice, the person on the other end seemed to be trying to tell me that there was actually no plan loaded against the modem, and that I would need to create a new plan every time I needed to top up the data allowance ... at least I think so - it was tough trying to understand her accent.
None of this was explained by the retail salesperson in the Telecom shop, naturally, and had it been, I would have been down to Voda or 2D in seconds. The idea that you can't top up a prepaid plan by giving Telecom money on their own website seems entirely bizarre - it's the kind of pointless bureaucracy that would have made the Soviet-era Bulgarian Civil Service blush with embarrassment.
My expectation was that having bought the modem off the salesperson - who helpfully pointed out that 2GB on prepaid was $50, while adding the same data to our existing company post-paid account would cost $60 - both the modem and the plan would just work, and that Telecom would thereafter be happy to take my money in exchange for data. Foolish me.
So the moral of the story is this: the hardware is great, the network is fast, but the prepaid billing has been designed by idiots.
Anyone from Telecom care to explain the rationale behind why this has been made so difficult?