Mr. M had a new payasyougo SIM card but was struggling to get it properly operational, so I went round to try to offer some help. He’d created an account with the network but didn’t remember the password he’d set. We tried to recover the account, but we couldn’t without either the phone number of the SIM, which he couldn’t remember, or by accessing his email which we couldn’t do without data on the phone.

We tried hotspotting a connection from my phone to get into his email, but there wasn’t the recovery link we should have found in there. He was able to see some emails though, which had been waiting for him for over a week. We didn’t have any credit or data on the SIM, nor even the phone number for it, so I suggested we try getting a whole new SIM from a network that has a high-street presence (this one didn’t), so that we can get their help setting it up, and Mr. M can go in there in the future if needed. Network X wasn’t far away, they had the kind of payasyougo plan Mr. M wanted, and were happy to help us swap it over. However, when we tried to pay, their PDQ machine didn’t even work (as if) so we moved on to another shop.

After being shouted at for even entering the shop of a competitor network, and then a bit of a wait for an assistant, they were really helpful and understanding but ultimately didn’t have the type of plan Mr. M was after, and the plans they did have were mad complicated.

We discussed all the alternative different branches of Network X from Brent Cross to Bond Street, and how accessible they were (or rather weren’t) to Mr. M by public transport.

After a lot of fiddling I wasn’t able to progress him very far sadly, but with any luck he can get some assistance again to either try to persist with the original SIM, or go along to a branch of Network X to get set-up with a new one.