dryfter | Most difficult upgrade, ever (Reply)

Christ on a Bike. You'd think it'd be easy to pay your mobile phone company money in order for them to upgrade you to a new handset, right?

Wrong.

Orange really dropped the ball on this one:

The orange webshite has listed the Sony Ericsson P910 as being out of stock for ever.
The retail store I visited claimed they didn't even do the SE P910i. I had to get their own catalogue out to persuade them otherwise.
The retail store tried to sell me a Treo 650, but this fell thru when they spent half an hour trying to enable the handwriting recognition they claimed it had.
Google says, no, the Treo just doesn't have it. Annoyingly.
And it's more expensive than the P910 anyway.
Carphone warehouse do Orange upgrades as well - but (a) don't have stock of the P910, and (b) Wanted 50% more cash than Orange themselves.

Giving up on the highstreet, I tried calling Orange HQ.

First guy I spoke to said no, I'd have to wait for a P910 to come into stock. No, no firm dates available. Could be forever.
Second girl I spoke to said yes, they are all on back-order.. BUt there are some uncollected ones lying around, and she could give me one.. But without a discount. If I want the discount, I have to go into the backorder queue. oookaaay....

I gave up on the P910, and decided to get the SPV M500, aka a rebranded Magician. Not a bad piece of kit, apparently - and cheaper than the P910. Of course, this was prone to disaster as well:

Phoning Orange, I'm told that the phone is only available to business customers. I can't have it, no matter what I pay.
It's available for Upgrade via the website though, I say - So she recommends I just do that then.
So I do. I'm just waiting for something else to go wrong now..