Monday, April 02, 2007
Bonehead Maneuver
On Saturday night, my Chinese cellphone fell out of my pocket as I was exiting a taxicab (if you ever saw me climb in and out of one of these tiny cars, you would understand). Anyway, I kept calling it and no one answered. On Sunday morning, I got the “the phone you are calling is powered off message”. So off to get a new cellphone. In China, the GSM-based phones are all driven off SIM cards, which has the phone number and the phonebook stored on it. I could really care less about the physical phone, but the SIM card was what I really wanted back. That was not going to happen. In August, I had someone who spoke Mandarin help me obtain a phone. Today, I was going to try it alone to see if I could do it. So headed back to the same store that I used in August. As rode my bike down the street the second time looking for the shop, I could not find it. I then realized that the huge hole in the row of stores was the place where the building used to be that held the phone store. Uh Oh, this was getting harder now.
I ventured off and found some other stores that sold phones. At one store, the cheapest phone was $250US AFTER negotiating. I continued on. At the next store, after negotiating down to $150US for the same phone, the box came out with a different banged-up phone in it. So I moved on, getting farther and farther away from the main shopping districts and getting better prices. I finally ended up close to the big Electronics mart and went in there for the phone. I was able to get the same model for $93US. Now comes the fun part..trying to pay for it.
The first thing the sale clerk wanted was my name..No Problem. Then I thought she asked for my phone number..yep, she did..I responded that I needed to buy the phone and a phone number. I did not know my phone number, yet. This put a huge crimp in the process. Apparently, you need to have a phone number in order to physically buy a phone…go figure.
So I asked to buy a phone number / SIM card. This is a process of looking through a typed list of numbers and picking the one you want from inventory. Some numbers are more expensive than others. The number 4 is considered unlucky in China since it is pronounced very close to the word for Death. So I picked a phone number that had a 4 in it to save me…$4US. I had to take my sales slip to a cashier and pay for the SIM card…a process with a lot red stamping of pieces of paper and an official receipt with some more red stamps on it. I take the receipt back to the sales clerk and then start the process to purchase the physical phone again. She was happy now that I had a phone number to fill out the form. Now, I had to go back to the same cashier with a different receipt and go through the stamping process again. This time, I noticed a Visa acceptance mark and tried to use my credit card to buy my $93 phone. That would require my passport so they could photocopy it, and they also wanted to photocopy my credit card. I paid cash.I went back to the sales clerk and made her assemble everything, switch the phone menu to English and test the phone to make sure it worked. 3 hours later, $150 US lighter, I have a phone again. More importantly, I was able to do it by myself.
I ventured off and found some other stores that sold phones. At one store, the cheapest phone was $250US AFTER negotiating. I continued on. At the next store, after negotiating down to $150US for the same phone, the box came out with a different banged-up phone in it. So I moved on, getting farther and farther away from the main shopping districts and getting better prices. I finally ended up close to the big Electronics mart and went in there for the phone. I was able to get the same model for $93US. Now comes the fun part..trying to pay for it.
The first thing the sale clerk wanted was my name..No Problem. Then I thought she asked for my phone number..yep, she did..I responded that I needed to buy the phone and a phone number. I did not know my phone number, yet. This put a huge crimp in the process. Apparently, you need to have a phone number in order to physically buy a phone…go figure.
So I asked to buy a phone number / SIM card. This is a process of looking through a typed list of numbers and picking the one you want from inventory. Some numbers are more expensive than others. The number 4 is considered unlucky in China since it is pronounced very close to the word for Death. So I picked a phone number that had a 4 in it to save me…$4US. I had to take my sales slip to a cashier and pay for the SIM card…a process with a lot red stamping of pieces of paper and an official receipt with some more red stamps on it. I take the receipt back to the sales clerk and then start the process to purchase the physical phone again. She was happy now that I had a phone number to fill out the form. Now, I had to go back to the same cashier with a different receipt and go through the stamping process again. This time, I noticed a Visa acceptance mark and tried to use my credit card to buy my $93 phone. That would require my passport so they could photocopy it, and they also wanted to photocopy my credit card. I paid cash.I went back to the sales clerk and made her assemble everything, switch the phone menu to English and test the phone to make sure it worked. 3 hours later, $150 US lighter, I have a phone again. More importantly, I was able to do it by myself.
