No But We Have It In Pink. Is That Ok Sir?

As I write this there is a huge debate going on about the future of university tuition fees. Fearing that there will be 1000 posts about this event, I decided to finally get around to writing my Blog about buying a phone.

When I first came to secondary school, I was given a phone. Of course I was ecstatic about it. It was the first I had ever had so I obviously thought it was awesome.

However, in 20 minutes I had figured out it wasn’t awesome. Upon my recent research, I’ve found it was the first release from the new Nokia “Superbasic” range, The Nokia 1110. Most phones from this era had a colour screen. Mine didn’t.

Eventually I was given an upgrade, The Nokia 1600. This was also from the Superbasic range. In fact, when James May emptied his pockets for an MMR scan on “James May’s 20^th Century”, one of the things he took out was my phone. I also saw it in the hands of an old woman when I was in Guernsey.

So after 4 years, I have finally convinced my mother that I need a good phone. So immediately I went to my network provider’s website to find a new one.

Fine, except my provider is Tesco.

Tesco is fine when you’re looking for potatoes or chicken. Their own brand crisps are especially good. But for electronics, look elsewhere. While I know I could use another network provider, Tesco are the cheapest. So they’re staying.

I selected a phone I liked very much. I don’t remember which one, but I went to the store to buy it. When I got there, I found that there were in fact 6000 phones available rather than the 2 advertised on the website. This meant it was impossible to find the one I wanted.

So I went to see the guy at the desk. He said that he didn’t have the one I wanted, but there was another, almost identical one available. When I asked for him, he said he would be happy to go and get it, and slouched off to the back room. When he returned, 10 minutes later, he reached under the desk and pulled out the phone I wanted. Christ knows what he was doing in the back room. But I took a look and it turned out that the phone was on T-mobile, not Tesco, and would therefore cost a billion pounds. On further investigation, the same phone was at least £10 less on nearly all other networks. Vodafone was the cheapest. But the guy didn’t have one on Tesco.

He went to get another one, and came back with one that was indeed on Tesco. It fitted all my spec, except for one key issue. It was pink. What sort of idiot brings a guy a pink phone? After a call around, he said that the phone I wanted was in fact in stock. But only at New Malden, which was 15 minutes away by car. In an irritating sort of way, he also added that Tesco closes in half an hour. Thanks for that.

So me and my dad drive like hell to New Malden to get this phone. When we get there, a man asked us a list of about 40 questions, none of them had anything to do with the phone or our account. He then produced the phone I wanted. But it wasn’t, it was in pink. After 10 minutes argument, he told us the store was closed and we would have to leave. I am not joking.

I swear that Tesco has some kind of passion for pink phones. I looked at their website and almost all the good phones are in pink. There’s a few in black, but they’re all crap, or £80. I had a budget of 40-50 and there’s nothing that I want to buy in that group. Once you get past the crap ones, it’s a sea of pink, or ones with tiny blackberry buttons that won’t work because my fingers are too fat.

I’ve looked at other websites and they all seem to comprehend that a phone needs to be in multiple colours. So why can’t the second biggest supermarket chain in England understand that?

So as I write this I’m stuck with the Nokia 1600, in grey. Thanks Tesco.