Having a frustrating time at the moment.
Damaged a car tyre in Malta (visiting SWMBO’s family), by running over a high kerb dodging an idiot driver who came round a bend at speed on the wrong side. Couldn’t change the wheel myself, because I couldn’t budge the wheelnuts, so had to call Avis recovery service. Cost €90 to get fixed by Avis. Have a damage excess policy (not with Avis) so on return from holiday, set about submitting the claim.
First problem was that I’d paid the repair bill with cash - apparently they expect you to always use a card!
Sorted that out, but then the website wouldn’t upload the PDFs of my documents. Tried various things, then phoned the company (on my landline). Got one of those ‘robots’ with ‘pick one of the choices and press the number’ things. Didn’t matter which one I tried, it kept cycling back to the message. Just now sent them an email to ask them to confirm which address to resort to for snail mail.
Funnily enough I had a similar problem with the Lichfield Garrick Theatre website (using my iMac). That site wouldn’t let me book and pay online. Gave me a screen about problems with Apple gear and Cookies etc and suggested various solutions. I tried them all, to no avail. When I tried to ring the Box Office, I got the ‘repeated message’ problem there as well! This was whether I used my landline or my iPhone.
SWMBO went on-line on her MacBook, and managed to book the theatre tickets. I have no idea why it wouldn’t work on my iMac! All the other sites I use are working OK and I can book and pay etc with no problems.
2nd Problem …
SWMBO decided she like my iPhone 6 plus, and laid claim to it, telling me to get myself a new phone. So off I trot to Stormfront in Sutton Coldfield to look at the new iPhone. They had the iPhone 11 Pro Max 256gb, so I bought that (it’s only money!), and let them set it up for me. Got them to move the SIM from the iPhone 6 (got a new PAYG one for SWMBO to use), so that I wouldn’t have to mess about telling everyone of a phone number change.
I hour later, it was ready, and off I went to play at being “grandad’s taxi” for my gymnast granddaughter. She was playing with my new phone (I hadn’t actually taken it out of the box myself), and told me that what I had was in fact the iPhone XS! Yes, they’d given me the wrong phone!
Couldn’t find the time to get back to the shop before closing time, so went in again yesterday. Profuse apologies from them. The receipt had the correct phone, but the registration number was for the XS! Same rigmarole to set it up, and after an hour I finally had what I paid for. Decided to do the backup restore using iTunes, to save wasting further time.
Get home tried to restore all my apps, contacts etc from iTunes, and the Bl**dy program kept telling me that the backup was encrypted. Looked in the setup for iTunes, and backup encryption WASN’T turned on, so that was nonsense. Eventually finished up putting the whole lot back on manually. I was NOT pleased, especially as I had to reset my Apple ID password, because iTunes started refusing to accept my one, which I was cutting and pasting from my password manager!
After that, I did a factory reset on the old iPhone, told it our wifi password and installed the contacts SWMBO wanted etc, and gave it to her. I thought that was it all solved, until I found out that if I tried to ring her phone to check all was well, both her iPhone and my new one rang!
This was because I’d OK’d the usual messages about iMessage and new Apple ID on on her phone! Eventuall had to change both our Apple IDs and make sure that I didn’t include her on my iMessage setup (I have it running on my phone, mac, and ipad). Why the hell can’t Apple change things so that you can just tell a device to stop linking to another device in this was?
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Apples go wrong just as often as Windoze etc, just in different ways. Well, that’s today’s rant over with …
