A few weeks after switching my iPhone to the EE network, I noticed a funny thing. It hadn’t rung. I checked my voicemail and found heaps of messages from angry people asking why I wouldn’t answer. Was I sick? Was I avoiding them? Had I finally lost all grip on reality and run away to join a convent of Cistercian nuns?
A constant stream of furious texts was coming in as well, although a lot weren’t coming in, I found out later. All said the same thing. ‘Where are you? Why are you ignoring me? Have you been granted asylum in Montana by Donald Trump already?!’
Meanwhile, my nearest and dearest got hold of me on my secret other number, the one connected to the ancient BlackBerry that I cling to for dear life because I hate the iPhone so much. I only give the BlackBerry number to people I really worry about worrying about me: chiefly my mum and the builder boyfriend. That phone I had kept on Vodafone, and that phone still faithfully rang.
But after the iPhone contract was switched to EE to save money, not only did it not ring, it didn’t notify me it hadn’t rung either. All it did was not ring at all — that I noticed anyway — and go straight to voicemail.
I checked the settings and nothing had changed. It was not on the setting for ‘go straight to voicemail’, it was on the setting for normal ringing please, thank you very much.
Only it didn’t seem to ring. I took it into the phone shop where I had signed the contract and they tested it. But as there was no EE reception in the phone shop they couldn’t prove anything one way or another.
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