YOU are either interested in the mobile phone situation or you're not. Sorry, if you're not. But anyone listening to Liveline last week will know that there is a large constituency out there with fairly bad things to say about Eircell. It seemed to me that caller after caller rang in to say that the network has become overstretched, that there are spots with no service all over the place, that everywhere else in Europe the mobile phone works perfectly as a means of communication but not in Ireland, and that all you hear from Eircell if you complain is: "Yes, we know we have some problems but we're overcoming them."
There was even a doctor who rang to complain about the way Eircell subtly shifts the blame for calls that are not connected from itself on to the customer. The phone may be powered off, the Eircell message says, even when the doctor is certainly not powered off because he's on call and the lack of connection is entirely Eircell's fault.
But for all the calls, nobody touched on my grouse this week. Which is that I now have no mobile phone. None. I cannot make or receive calls because I don't have a phone. But I still have to pay Eircell rental for the non phone until next December. This is because if your phone is stolen - as mine was last weekend - or you lose it, the year's contract you signed with Eircell is still enforced. Needless to say I don't have a copy of this contract. I presume there always was just the one copy which one signs and sends back and never knows what's in it.
No doubt it mentioned this point about the year's contract. I never noticed. I did keep bits of Eircell paper. I have a bit called "Building You a Bigger Better Network" and I have "Eircell News" for winter 1996 ("Communicating, Coverage, Care and Choice"). I have the page of my initial invoice and the three pages of my first, eye opening bill. But none of the callers mentions the position in which I now find myself. I owe Eircell money, and I have no phone.
WELL, buy a phone, you may say. But I now discover that mobile phones cost a lot of money. I thought they were about £20 because I see ads for them all over Dublin at that price. But that turns out to be the Eircell come on: it's giving the instruments away on all kinds of deals so as to get people to sign up at least for a year. I would never have paid £200 or £400 or £1,000 for a phone. I know I don't need or want one that badly.
I got mine through the Automobile Association, and I don't remember its literature saying anything about the stolen or lost position either, even though the whole idea was that you would have the phone in the car so as to ring it if you needed assistance, which greatly increases the risk of the instrument being stolen. As mine was. From the car.
Now, before I go on, let me ask the question I asked the Eircell person I reported the theft to, and the man in "Person 2 Person" (the company which organised the Eircell/Automobile Association deal). "Why would anyone steal a mobile phone?" Or rather "How can calls be made on a stolen mobile phone?" Isn't the use of the phone supposed to be protected by the owner's personal PIN number which the thief can't possibly know or guess?
Admittedly, when I myself got my first PIN number wrong and blocked the phone and had to get a second one (my relationship with this phone has been a tortured one from the start), I got it over the phone. I'm sure I answered some questions about my address or the like, to identify myself.
But then my purse and who knows what else was stolen along with the phone from the car, so maybe the thief can pretend to be me? That's all I need - a bill for calls to Rio de Janeiro along with whatever I owe already and another 10 months of rental...
"What does a thief do with a stolen mobile phone?" I asked the "Person 2 Person" man. "Well, maybe they're sold on to people like yourself," he said. "How do you mean, people like myself?" I asked. "People who've had their phones stolen.
Now normally, if you have an item worth £200 lying around in your car you are well aware of it. It is both a triumph of Eircell's marketing and a terrible reflection on my attentiveness that I was not so aware.
As it is, I have house contents insurance with Guardian, so I made a pathetic call to it. No joy. Some companies do include a mobile phone under, or in, or whatever the preposition is, a home policy. But with other companies you have to specify it.
It would only have cost about £6 to cover a £300 instrument. If I had satisfied the company that it wasn't attached to the car, like a car phone, and that I wasn't using it for business or professional reasons, then it would have paid up. I suppose.
BUT nobody would have insured the contract with Eircell. Since Eirtime - marketspeak for rental - can run to 20 a month, this could mean that you owe £1,742.40 with nothing to show for it.
My most earnest advice to you is: do not lose your phone. Do not allow it to be stolen.
What should I do myself? Here I am with a number, a "line" so to spetik, and a commitment, but no phone. I don't like the feeling of being forced into buying a phone, but if I do not, Eircell wants - in writing - notice of my intention not to use my line. In writing! "But you're going to bill me for it anyway?" I said to the young woman in customer relations. "Oh, yes," she replied. "Well then, isn't it all the same to me whether I inform you or not?" She seemed to think this wouldn't be very public spirited of me.
But then, what has public spiritedness got to do with it? I don't, on the metaphorical level, owe Eircell anything. It is a profit seeking business, not a bunch of patriots adding to the achievements in the line of posts and telegraphs of the infant Republic.
It is marketing mobile phones as aggressively as anything has been marketed here, and if the callers to Liveline are anything to go by (and I know the programme does try hard to be balanced), more aggressively than it can live up to. As for myself, I'm in the business of looking for a cheap second hand phone, if such a thing exists. Or can you buy them cheap in duty frees and British High Streets? But then, would you get the kind of SIM card Eircell wants? Oh, I wish I'd never got involved...
The only good thing to come out of my relationship with Eircell so far is the acquisition of all this consumer information I'm passing on to you. The nitty-gritty of possessing a mobile phone has been obscured by them being businessmen's accessories, up to this, paid for by companies. Now that women, attuned to the minutiae of housekeeping, are getting in on the act, things may become more clear. Consider me a pioneer in this cause.