h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Part of the fun of getting ready for a once-in-a-lifetime trip is accumulating various travel sundries, and luggage big enough to allow for 19 days of travel, souvenirs, and thank you gifts for my hosts (which I managed to keep secret from said hosts, though I did message back and forth with a couple of non-hosts to see if they thought a particular gift would suit a particular person (as Ag pointed out when I said I'd had a hard time, one knows what online friends ARE like, not necessarily what they DO like). If I hadn't've been allowing room for souvenirs and gifts, I could easily've gotten away with the largest carry-on, and my jacket's huge pockets.

One purchase I needed to make was a simple mobile. While I do have a smart phone, it isn't compatible with the mobile networks in the UK. Even if it were, I'd've needed to get a new SIM card anyway, because my carrier here's overseas rate is quite scary. So a plain mobile and a cheap pay-as-you-go plannit was to be--though I was going to take my smart phone anyway, because I've got ebooks and audio books on there, and the phone had a good regular camera and a decent wide lens camera, as well. Note the "had". The regular camera stopped focusing. Well, technically, it became a fixed-focus camera. After some research, this turned out to be a known issue. Because I took it into my carrier 13 months after I'd gotten it, they couldn't help me, though they did tell me to try contacting LG. Fortunately, my phone squeezed in under the wire with them, and they would cover shipping costs both ways. This was to be my last bit of good luck... I'd tried a factory reset before contacting LG, on the off chance that it was a software problem, but that didn't fix anything. I told the person on the phone that I'd done a reset, but they walked me through another . I duly sent it in, following their instructions, and used one of the old phones we had floating around here during those 2 weeks (none of the old phones we have will work overseas, either). When I got my phone back, the notes said that all they had done was replace the software, which sounds pretty much like just a factory reset to me... I got the phone set back up to the point that I could test the camera and, just like I thought, the main camera still wouldn't focus (the selfie camera and the wide angle lens were never bothered--they always worked just fine). So I call LG to let them know, and that rep said that I could just send it back with the old paperwork and FedEx number. I was reopening the email from a couple weeks prior, when it struck me that that couldn't be right. So I called in again, and my hunch was right--I'd need a new work number and FedEx number. Off the phone went again. When it came back, they had done the same useless "fix". By that time, there wasn't time to send it back and insist that they either tackle the physical problem or replace the phone--fireworks selling season was coming up, and I needed a smart pone that wasn't prone to random freezing (the reason the spare phone I was using *was* a spare phone) to be able to take credit card payments. Once fireworks selling season was over, there was no time to send the phone to LG and get it back in time for my trip. (A friend gave me a camera to keep forever, not just for use during my trip, for which I am very grateful, but that's not the point...) Each time you send a phone back, you get a 90 day warranty, so I would've been able to send my phone back in yet again after I got back, but I didn't bother. It's really too bad that all this has soured me on LG--before the problem with the camera, this phone had been the favorite that I'd had, and I was planning on keeping it until it either physically broke or until technological advances bricked it.

I didn't have the smoothest of times with my UK phone, either. About a year ago, I found a very inexpensive basic phone online. I ordered it, and it arrived in due course. It was tiny, but I figured it would be good enough. Fast forward to spring, after I've made all my major purchases, and realize that I'm going to have more than enough. I poke around online to find a phone with a larger screen and a qwerty keyboard, because I realized that a screen that only shows 24 characters will be a bit small if I end up mostly texting (which I did do). I order a phone, and it arrives. It *does* take a larger SIM than the teeny phone, but I'd had the foresight to order an adapter, as well. I managed to mangle the place where the SIM card goes so badly that one of the contacts ripped physically off of the phone... OK, fine, I'll just put he card back into the teeny phone and deal with it. Except the cover for the SIM card area completely disappeared, and the SIM card won't stay in without it. So I had to order *another* phone. I couldn't just order another one of the model I'd broken, because no one selling that phone could get it to me before I left. So I had to find something else (it was already July at this point). I also made a point of ordering another adapter, because the mangling of the phone also ruined the adapter I'd need. When the box arrived, the phone looked good, but there were no adapters in the adapter package. I called immediately, but the soonest a replacement package could arrive was July 19--and Tom and I would be in the town with the airport on the 18th... After some frantic checking, I learned that I could, indeed, order a new SIM card from GiffGaff and sync it up with my account, keeping the UK phone number I'd given everyone months ago. Only problem was that GiffGaff only mails cards within the UK--I'd gotten my card from an EBayer. Fortunately, Agapanthus agreed to have GiffGaff send her a SIM on my behalf. Of course, I did have a last bit of phone drama--which turned out to be sleep-deprived user error So I *was* finally contactable in the UK, and quite quickly was reminded of why I didn't text much before I had a smart phone--my UK phone was a clamshell with T9 keyboard...

What a carry-on! Last time I went to the States in 2015 I ordered a SIM card in advance, but when I went again this year the service was no longer available. I knew I wouldn't be making more than a couple of calls this time, so I just left it to chance and made the first call just when we arrived with my German SIM card (possibly sent a text, too) to my daughter-in-law so that she could come and pick us up.

We went off for a road trip for the middle week of our stay, and I only activated data roaming for those days - the rest of the time I used son and daughter-in-law's wifi at home.

No hassle, no change of phone or SIM card and I reckon that, by limiting my calls and data usage, I spent about the same as I would have done if I'd carried out Plan B, which was to get a cheap pay-as-you-go phone as soon as I'd landed to last me whilst there.

I also had a tablet with me, but de-activated all data traffic on that, using it for taking and showing photos, reading books, and playing games, and only going to h2g2 or other internet sites when wifi was available.

"until technological advances bricked it."

I like this phrase - my phone isn't a brick because it is tiny, but it has been bricked because the bigger phones are technologically advanced

It is difficult when things malfunction - we perhaps should keep complaining so that the manufacturer learns the lesson, but it does take energy to keep complaining so there is a limit to what one person can do (like me and HP when my laptop broke a month after the warranty ran out)... Avoiding their products has an effect, though, so they will have to start upping their game in future if they want to carry on