Windows phone 7 woes

My WP7.5 is broke!

Plugged it into the laptop yesterday as it needed charging, and i rembered it told me it needed updating a couple of weeks ago. All updates went fine, but some time yesterday i lost my mobile signal (signal strength is never great at my house) and it never came back.

I tried all the usual stuff, such as turning it off and back on and removing/replacing the sim card, but still no joy. I know it wasn't an area problem as my wifes phone is on Orange too and she had a signal.

This morning before i went to work it was still the same, so i picked up a cheap PAYG phone we had in the drawer, thinking i could at least check the sim card was working ok. I swapped the 2 sim cards over and both phones worked fine (the spare phone is on O2). But as soon as you swapped them back it wouldn't work.

Ended up going into an Orange shop this afternoon, and they basically just rang tech support and handed me the phone. We tried a brand new sim card in my phone and got a full strength signal straightaway. they then tried my sim in a couple of their phones and it wouldn't work at all.

So in the end Orange have decided there must be a fault with my sim card (no shit Sherlock) but its gonna take them upto 3 days to send it out to me. Apparently the Retail shops are only allowed to give out Contract sim cards when you get a new phone/contract/upgrade.

In the meantime i can 't use my WP7, and am stuck using the cheapest tiniest LG handset in the world.

I will say that both the guy in the shop and the girl i spoke to in support were as helpful as they could be, but you would think they could have authorised the shop to replace my sim card.

Not as if you were lying about it not working after they witnessed it.

At the very least they could've given you a courtesy type sim card till you proper one comes.

I've had a similar problem with O2 a few years back. Despite them having the same names the physical retail shop and the online shop are two completly different entities who have nothing to do with each other. Go figure?!?

Well no sign of my new sim card yet. Getting a bit annoyed now, they said upto 3 days (which i guess they meant working days) so it better be here when i get in from work tomorrow.

I've also discovered a problem with the Windows phones too, all your contacts are saved on your live profile and your phones memory, not on your sim card. And there is no way of copying them onto the sim, unlike most other phones.

So all my contacts are on my HTC which i can't use, and i can't copy them onto the cheap PAYG phone i'm having to use in the meantime. unless i physically enter every one of them. So i'm having to carry both phones around.

Got my new sim card yesterday so my Windows phone is back to full working order!