The other day Mark and I were trying to make an international call, only to discover we couldn't. We asked our dear sister, Yih to help us understand what the response was only to have her tell us, she has no idea. She calls one of her employees over to listen to the recording, and he too, doesn't understand and yes, they are both Chinese, which means they should be able to translate for us.a If Chinese can't understand Chinese, how are we expected to understand this crazy language. I digress....
The next day, Mark and I decide to go to the little place where we get our international cards, and see if the sales lady could help us. She tried the original number, to no avail, then called China Telcom. After 10 minutes of talking, she gave us another international number to use. We decided to test the new number before leaving the premises, and of course that number didn't work either. The young lady calls again and gets another response. She tries that and it doesn't work. By the 4th time and an hour later, we had the phones working except now there's more involved than just dialing the prefix number and then the local number. It's now become a 5 step process. We must use the 5 digit international number, the press 2, followed by a 0, then a pound sign, and then the number.
Yea, no more spontaneous calling on this card, this will be a two person job. One to do the dialing, the other to call out the phone number.
I will say one thing though, the service is excellent. This morning I received a call from the gal that was helping us, asking if everything was okay. About 10 minutes later, I received another call from China Telcom to ensure that our card is working and to call them if we had any other questions or issues.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Some things we will never understand..
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4 comments:
Oh that's funny. It reminds me of my days in China. All sorts of weird situations popped up while I was living there - mainly having to do with phone and banking - but it sure makes life interesting, doesn't it?
Thanks for stopping by again, Tina. It's nice to find a new friend.
I just dial 12593 then the number (00 44 xxxx) from my mobile and it's dirt cheap. I think you can just call 1860 and subscribe to that service if you are a China Mobile user.
Woai - if only it was that easy.
Dialing 12593 first is rejected, as it just disconnects, and for getting China Mobile to let call go through they wanted 1000 RMB or something. We were told it was because we are on a pay as you go type of plan. Who knows? The cards worked great until these last ones, and it appears that it should reset once these run out of minutes and we get new cards...
It's not that much of a hassle, and since we only really use those minutes for drunk calls maybe it's better this way.
How about dialing 17951? I thought that works even for pay as you go? For 12593, yes, I had to pay a monthly fee for that, I think 1 rmb and perhaps you have to be a subscriber.
I am pretty sure there are packages for pay as you go as even many locals use this type of service.
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