…………GC Asia…………….

I had to write about this

The other day I decided to finally get a SIM card to activate my phone since I know couple people here in Shanghai and it would be for convenience. So I go to China Mobile, the largest provider here, and got myself a card for 110 RMB, which is around $15. 60 was for the SIM and 50 is my beginning balance. They told me, well showed me on the calculator, that the charge is 0.13 RMB per minute so I will have plenty of minutes to use for the remaining 3 weeks. Well it seemed that way at least. I have them the money, they gave me the SIM and that was it - no paperwork. I made couple of phone calls, sent couple text messages and all seemed ok

My number by the way is +8615021081844. Sorry I couldn’t make it longer. I wanted one with more digits but they said no.

Next day I checked my balance on a supposedly free service and my balance was down to 43. Which is fine, it’s just a dollar, but if it goes with that rate I will be soon needing recharge. I started talking to my supervisor about it and he told me I can check it online. It’s funny but the site is in English as well as Chinese, until the point where you can check your account information, from there you need local supervision. So we started making attempts to log in. For security reasons there were passwords and so on, but it seemed a little more complicated that it should have so it took us 5-10 minutes just to log in to the initial customer service screen. When we finally did, my boss said: Oh they gave you a name:…

My new name is Yin Hong Dong! According to my boss it means…nothing! But you can call me Yin!

So we kept trying to search for detailed balance information and another 10 minutes later we finally logged in. For the services I used I was charged around 1 RMB. But the came the interesting part - 2 RMB for internet message???, some small charges for unknown things, and 5 RMB for a melody feature, that way when people call me instead of a ringing tone they can hear a song - Nice!! Oh and it changes every 5 minutes. If you want you can call me to see what is your luck. When we tried from the office it was classical music. I need to send them some techno beats! I won’t even bother going back and trying to argue these 5 RMB for one thing because it will take me 20 RMB just to go there and for another it’s pocket change and they won’t understand me :). Customer service number - no thanks. But it’s funny how they added bunch of start from the beginning, I won’t even check my balance anymore. But you can call me Yin!