[mister2d]

It started with a BlackBerry Passport and ended with the Vodafone manager threatening to punch my lights out

�Come back at six o�clock when I�m not wearing my uniform and say that,� he said.

This is one very good read. Very entertaining. The lengths people go to over gadgets is very intriguing these days.

[okanagan]

I am using the Z30, and I can't read the damn page, the fonts ridiculous small, and the text not even auto wrap, can someone light me up so I can read it, thanks.

Posted via CB10

[LoneStarRed]

The Vodafone people at the store act just like govt employees.

" I do not think that word means what you think it means. "

[dejanh]

Doesn't really have much to do with the Passport but a good read nevertheless. I agree with his conclusion 100%. Everyone today feels that they never deserve to be admonished, no matter their behavior.

[DocDRM]

Is an anorak one of those man dresses?

Posted via CB10, Mostly from my Passport, occasionally my Z30

[Ducca683]

"Politeness is the two way street...". We heard the story of one side, other have no chance of telling theirs. Not siding with any party involved, but every action instigate some kind of reaction...

Passport is here just a innocent bystander ... collateral damage. Or maybe it is cause of this aggravating attack, as Vodafone don't really want to sell BlackBerry produced phones?!? Will be stupid, but there is so much stupidity in the world, it should not be a surprise to anyone...

As for the article reading, open in Browser, then Reader mode...

Posted via CB10

[imcurved]

Wow. Thanks for the story.

PassportSQW100-1/10.3.0.1154

[Peter Johnson4]

http://www.qoshe.com/independent/how...hts-out/224668

Posted via CB10

[HafizZ10]

Reading the article well using Z10 . Unfortunately this is the world we are living now. Pathetic rejects running the store with no interest of making the sale or even care about customers.

Posted via CB10

[j21jam6]

He didn't let us know if he will be trying another Vodafone store.

Posted two-handed via Passport

[Peter Johnson4]

That didn't work sorry. Try this -anyway just Google Howard Jacobson Independent Vodephone.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...t-9921700.html

Posted via CB10

[sfor13thlegion]

Just had a read of the author's bio:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Jacobson

This guy is an award winning author and NOT some scumbag tech analyst ****** ala BGR.

BBRY need to Fed Ex a free Passport to him ASAP and thank him for standing up for consumers in this messed up world we live in.

Vodafone need to fire or at the very least, retrain all those idiots ASAP, and hang their heads in shame.

Posted via CB10

[VR6]

It started with a BlackBerry Passport and ended with the Vodafone manager threatening to punch my lights out - Comment - Voices

Anyway, I was curious about this mobile phone I�d been reading about. The BlackBerry Passport. A giant of a phone that would be ideal, I thought, for a man with fading vision, stubby fingers and no interest in selfies. It�s possible you can take a selfie with a BlackBerry Passport but it�s so heavy you won�t be able to hold it up to your face long enough to strike a becoming pose. I should say it �looks� so heavy because so far I haven�t been able to lay hold of one. Indeed, it was in the hope of being able to do just that that I breezed, all innocence, into a Vodafone shop in the vicinity of Covent Garden. I won�t be any more specific than that. It�s not my intention to encourage copycat visits.

Two assistants were talking to each other at the counter. They didn�t look up or ask if they could help me. I found a BlackBerry Passport the size of War and Peace glued to a display table and enquired if they had one I could pick up. One of them shook his head. I wondered, in that case, how I could discover how heavy it was and what it felt like in my hand. The other shrugged and said I couldn�t. How then, I wondered, did people discover if the phone was suitable to their needs. �They buy it,� the first assistant said.

I thought I ought to be sure I�d heard what I�d heard. �So you�re telling me,� I said, �that in order to know whether you want to buy the phone you have to buy it?� �Yeah,� one of them said. �But we haven�t got any anyway,� the other added.

There�s a tide in the affairs of men, and all that. Swept on by that tide I approached the desk and expressed surprise at their way of doing business. I was a Vodafone customer and felt I had a right to expect a certain level of politeness, not to say helpfulness, from Vodafone staff. Were they here to sell phones or weren�t they?

It was at this point that a third person, wearing some sort of anorak and sitting at a little table near the counter, told me not to shout. I told him I hadn�t at any point raised my voice. I had expressed exasperation, which was not the same thing. �Don�t shout at my staff,� he repeated, though the only person shouting was him.

Since he had in this way declared himself to be a manager � a sub-manager as it turned out � but hadn�t stood to address me, I sat to address him. �If you�d heard the tone in which your staff answered my enquiry,� I said � letting the idea of professional derogation hang in the air between us � �you would understand why I spoke to them as I did. They were rude, I let them know I didn�t like it. I didn�t shout.�

�Get out of my face,� he said, getting into mine.

What happened next, how this led to that, how the two original men took turns to say, �If you know what�s good for you you�ll get out of this shop�, how the third man threatened to call the police, how I told him to call who he liked, how after no policeman arrived I decided life was too short for this and rose to go � still ignorant as to the configuration of the Blackberry Passport � all this I will not trouble you with. But as a parting shot, because I felt the event needed a finale, I called the sub‑manager a clown. Whether he�d trained to be a clown and failed, or whether his wife had run off with a clown, I had no way of ascertaining, but if he�d been in my face before, he was out the other end of it now. He reared up from the chair in which he�d all along been sitting. �Come back at six o�clock when I�m not wearing my uniform and say that,� he said.

So there you have it: in the space of 10 minutes I�d gone from making a modest enquiry about a phone to being threatened with having my lights punched out. And the cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker tells us that violence in civil society has declined.

I wrote to Vodafone�s chief executive, thinking he�d like to know. I was contacted with a number to ring, but it was just customer services � the place you go to complain about your bill. They offered me �30 for my inconvenience. Just think, reader: if I�d gone back to the store at six o�clock and been knocked senseless by the sub‑manager, they might have offered me �50.

Whether the person who made the offer believed me when I told him money wasn�t the issue, and whether I should have believed him when he told me the case was being investigated, I don�t know. But I am not living in suspense.

There are several conclusions to be drawn from this, the more obvious, regarding the part faceless multinational companies play in raising social tension, I leave readers to draw for themselves. But we have reached a pretty pass when the surly, the disobliging and the downright rude believe they have a human right never to be admonished. Of course, no one should be abused, but a rebuke is not abuse. First we couldn�t slap a child, then we couldn�t tell him off. Now we cannot tell off anybody.

Politeness is a two-way street. We�ll be sorry when the public, tired of being treated with contempt and held in queues when it complains, decides to pull the whole lot down.

It started with a BlackBerry Passport and ended with the Vodafone manager threatening to punch my lights out - Comment - Voices - The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...t-9921700.html

Posted via CB10

[yvpan1]

I am using the Z30, and I can't read the damn page, the fonts ridiculous small, and the text not even auto wrap, can someone light me up so I can read it, thanks.

Posted via CB10

get the reader mode... you should be able to read the whole article

[mister2d]

Doesn't really have much to do with the Passport but a good read nevertheless. I agree with his conclusion 100%. Everyone today feels that they never deserve to be admonished, no matter their behavior.

Unsure what you meant the article not having anything to do with the Passport. He went to go try the Passport out for himself before purchasing it. Then that's when all the madness ensued.

[GeoK]

I'll offer him my passport.
Shame it could have been any phone.
The rudeness that he experienced is in no way to business.
But alas, he too admits his fault in it all. Added to by his finale remark.

[calicocat2010]

He should had just walked off when he realized that No one approached him to ask what he needed. But, if they had approached him and mocked BlackBerry, he still should had walked out. Most of the consumer public shame BlackBerry anyway and with their rude adolescent behavior they were probably Isheep.

[evodevo69]

What a messed up story loll.

Sounds like total rejects working at the store...

"How do you know if you should buy it or not"

"You buy it first"

What loll

#dirtythirty #naturalsound #CB10 #glassweave

[calicocat2010]

What a messed up story loll.

Sounds like total rejects working at the store...

"How do you know if you should buy it or not"

"You buy it first"

What loll

#dirtythirty #naturalsound #CB10 #glassweave

LOL God I hope that's not their new tagline.

[BBjer]

Is an anorak one of those man dresses?

Posted via CB10, Mostly from my Passport, occasionally my Z30

Just because the word is silly doesn't mean it's a silly man dress. Haha.

Posted via CB10

[maxb1ack]

I am using the Z30, and I can't read the damn page, the fonts ridiculous small, and the text not even auto wrap, can someone light me up so I can read it, thanks.

Posted via CB10

make use of reader mode?

[maxb1ack]

It started with a BlackBerry Passport and ended with the Vodafone manager threatening to punch my lights out

came here to post the link as well.. quite well written crackberry needs a writer with that twist in language


This is one very good read. Very entertaining. The lengths people go to over gadgets is very intriguing these days.

[Publisher1963]

This - which would have to be true, as it's in print and would therefore be subject to the libel laws - is an amazingly sad story on many levels. I have recently ceased all but one of my Vodafone accounts because of similarly poor customer service experiences, and because of their open dismissal of BlackBerry as a smartphone option.

The irony is that when I was in a High Street Apple Store buying someone an Xmas present last week, I had my Z30 out. The serving assistant latched onto it straight away and ended up, after playing with it for around 5/6 minutes, saying he was going to "look into it a bit more"! He was very impressed with it (and my enthusiastic explanation of what it did so well), but also added that (a) he'd never even heard of, let alone seen the Z30 and (b) that he thought BlackBerry had gone bust!!!

Posted via CB10... on my Z30 10.2.1 waiting for 10.3.x

[user5240]

I am using the Z30, and I can't read the damn page, the fonts ridiculous small, and the text not even auto wrap, can someone light me up so I can read it, thanks.

Posted via CB10

Open in the browser and you use the reader.

Posted via CB10

[bakron1]

A good read and what surprises me is that I thought the object of any business selling a product is to SELL and not drive a potential customer out of the store.

With employees and management with those kind of attitudes, it won't be long before you see that store listed in the bankruptcy column of the local newspaper.

Sent from my lovely passport on T Mobile USA