Internet Shopping

When pay as you go 3G USB modems were £99, I knew I didn't miss the internet that much. Now they're £49, I thought I'd give it a go.

They had them on sale in PC World - great - walk in, buy, get going...

The DVD boxes they use represent the product had minimal information, although they did say something about top-ups lasting 30 days... no data costs or anything. So I asked someone, Who asked someone else. Who went to find the most junior member of staff to deal with me, who still knew nothing. The 30 day thing is diabolical - if you don't use the data credit you've bought within 30 days, you lose it. Yes, lose it. If they did that on phones they'd never get away with it, and if grocers claimed back the food after a week, or a pub took back what's left of your pint after 20 mins - how can they justify this, other than being money grabbing? A letter to Ofcom should be written, but probably won't.

They also had no information ANYWHERE about data costs, and they actually had to ring '3' themselves to find out. So, if there's any PC World employees reading, £10 gets you 1Gb, £15 gets you 3Gb and £25 7Gb. Or rather, that's how much you can go up to within a month before paying more, before they grab it back after 30 days. Presumably the bulk discounts on higher amounts are to get as much money as they can upfront, whether you use it or not...

All hardly ideal, but since I mainly want to use it for August, I decided to get one anyway. At the till, they tried to charge me £69. Ah, we've brought the wrong one out, they said. The manager went to have a look, then told me there were two models, and they only had the more expensive one, although he couldn't tell me what the difference was, or what the other model was - so sounds like backpedalling bullshit to me, as he 'as a courtesy' overrode the till and sold it to me for the originally quoted price.

Of course I didn't dare say I was going to be using it on an Asus eee linux laptop, as it's not supported, even though PC World sell them. It works, after a bit of faffing, but since I'm not going to put any credit on it until next week to avoid being done over by the 30 day rule, all I can get get at so far on it is the three.co.uk website. Whether it continues to work, and I continue to fill up the internet with rubbish remains to be seen, let alone whether it was worth getting on for an hour of hassle in a tin shed on the Great West Road...