Hurrah! We’re back on the internet. We were 10 days without contact after a huge tree branch fell onto the Bigpond broadband cable that connects our house to the street pole opposite.
It took a fair bit of phoning Telstra and complaining to get anything done. We were able to get our emails and connect to the internet via our mobile phones, but that was burning up our data allowance very quickly. After one more insistent complaint, Telstra said I could buy a wifi hotspot that connected via the mobile phone network – and they would reimburse me!
I rushed off to the Telstra shop and bought a Netgear Aircard for $109. It worked really well from the start, getting a good phone signal and broadcasting fast wifi through the house.
The day after, two guys came, strung a new cable across the street and reconnected us to the world. No charge – act of nature.
The wifi hotspot will come in handy when we stay in faraway seaside places that have no internet and poor phone coverage. And it was free! But still little recompense for our 10 days without internet and without our Foxtel pay TV. We have Foxtel working now – just in time to watch live coverage of the Australia v India cricket test match in Poona.
BUT WAIT . . . .
There’s more free tech. My Apple Watch is almost two years old and a couple of weeks ago the microphone stopped working. Siri completely ignored me! I couldn’t answer phone calls from my wrist any more. Sigh!
Anyway, I checked my warranty and (unusually for me) I’d bought the AppleCare extra warranty when I bought the watch. This entitled me to ask for a replacement – which I did. They sent me a brand new watch, which arrived two days later, and I sent back the old one. New watch, no charge. Good onya, Apple. Let’s hope it lasts longer than two years this time!
better to be born lucky than rich 🙂