The Story of Mobile Phones

A few years ago, when 3G mobile phones were first launched in Australia, my daughter Veronica and I bought two 3G mobiles from a mobile phone shop in Chatswood. We were issued two 3G mobile phone sets (silver for me and red for Veronica) and two mobile phone numbers (04xxxxxxxx for me and 04yyyyyyyy for Veronica). As Veronica was still studying in university at that time, I grouped these two mobiles into one account under my name, and the monthly usages went into a single bill sent to our registered address in Sydney:

Sydney bill
John phone set – silver Veronica phone set – red
John phone no. – 04xxxxxxxx Veronica phone no. - 04yyyyyyyy
A/C name - John

The 3G phones were great. The network coverage was good. We were quite happy with the 3G mobile phone services.
Came 2007. Veronica graduated from College, found a job in the Government and relocated to Canberra. I thought it was appropriate time for Veronica to look after the usages of her mobile phone, and pay for her own bills. So we went to the mobile phone shop in Chatswood to request splitting the mobile 04yyyyyyyy to a separate account under Veronica and a separate bill to be sent to her registered address in Canberra. The salesperson asked us to fill in the necessary forms, and said the update would be made in a week's time.
In the following month, we received phone bills as follows:

Sydney bill	Canberra bill
John phone set – silver	Veronica phone set – red
John phone no. – 04xxxxxxxx	Veronica phone no. - 04yyyyyyyy
A/C name - John	A/C name - John

As we saw that the bill in Canberra was still under my name, we went to the mobile phone shop in Chatswood a few weeks later to ask for correction. The salesperson explained that the error might be due to the fact that the mobile was split from my original account under my name. They could just simply update the account name from John to Veronica. So we filled in the necessary forms, and were told that the update would be made in a week's time.
In the following month, we received new phone bills as follows:

Sydney bill	Canberra bill
John phone set – silver	Veronica phone set – red
John phone no. – 04xxxxxxxx	Veronica phone no. - 04yyyyyyyy
A/C name - Veronica	A/C name - John

As we saw that the account names were interchanged, we went to the mobile phone shop in Chatswood again a couple of months later, and asked for further corrections. This time the salesperson said they could just swap the names between the two accounts. So we filled in the necessary forms and were told that the updates would be made in a week's time.
In the following month, we received bizarre new phone bills as follows:

Sydney bill	Canberra bill
John phone set – silver	Veronica phone set – red
Veronica phone no. - 04yyyyyyyy	John phone no. – 04xxxxxxxx
A/C name - John	A/C name - Veronica

This time, the account names were correctly updated, but all my phone usages went to the Canberra bill and all Veronica's usages went to my Sydney bill. I had to pay for Veronica's usages and Veronica for mine, and we had to reimburse each other afterwards. We did these for a few months, and subsequently couldn't help but to complain to the mobile phone shop in Chatswood. The salesperson suggested a brilliant idea. He said in order to cut short the time to fix the problem and to save all the paperwork and updating, the simplest way was to swap my mobile phone set with Veronica's! We strongly refused saying we had our own choices of colour and style of the phone set. The salesperson then further suggested we could keep our phone sets and just swap the SIM cards!!
We went almost to the top of the roof. True. It would be simple for the shop as they didn't have to do anything. But we had to go through all the pains of notifying all our friends and contacts that our phone numbers were to change, not to mention to update all the contact information in the SIM cards ourselves. So we spent an hour in the shop patiently explaining in details where we started from and what exactly we wanted to be, and drew several diagrams and the following table outlining what we wanted to achieve:

Sydney bill	Canberra bill
John phone set – silver	Veronica phone set – red
John phone no. – 04xxxxxxxx	Veronica phone no. - 04yyyyyyyy
A/C name - John	A/C name - Veronica

So we filled in the necessary forms, and were told that the updates would be made in a week's time.
Luckily this time, all were fine in the following month. We were afraid that if we ever needed to go to the shop again to request for further changes, the salesperson might ask me to rename myself to Veronica, and Veronica to rename herself to John in order to fix our problem!!!

I just don't understand why an apparently simple matter could grow to become a such complicated and annoying issue!