My phone was acting weird today, displaying the message "Insert SIM card" when I didn't touch the SIM card at all and also telling me that my phone is restricted and prompts for a code to unlock it. I switched the phone on and off a few times and this seemed to solve the problem, though only temporarily. Oh btw, this happened just as I was going home from school. Anyway, by the time I arrived home, the phone was stuck at "Insert SIM card" and I couldn't do anything to make it go away. I tried re-inserting the SIM card to no avail. So I decided to call M1 (my phone line service provider) to see if they can help me.

Not knowing the M1 hotline number, I went to their website and found that it was 1627. Ok so I dialed the number and this is where things got weird. The customer service officer asked for my hp number and he did a check for my number but couldn't find it. So he put me on hold and did some more checking. When he got back to me he said, "this is not a starhub number, it's a M1 number." Then I was like stunned for a second then I asked,"er what number is this? is this M1, 1627?" Then he was like, "No ma'am this is Starhub 1633, maybe you dialed the wrong number?" But i'm very very 200% sure that I dialed 1627. I mean 1633 and 1627 are so far apart...how can I make such a mistake? And besides I didn't even know the Starhub number before this. Anyway so I apologised and he was very nice about it, said it was ok and thanks for calling. (lol I know that's part of their job but you know some people get annoyed when their time was wasted and you can hear it in their voice.)

This time, I made sure I entered each number slowly and carefully. And I got thru' to M1, yay! But frankly, though the Starhub call was unexpected and unplanned, I rather preferred it to the M1 call. After going thru the usual machine recorded voice and choosing a number of options, I finally got to talk to a human...who couldn't help me and transferred the call. Ok so I was on hold for a while listening to some M1 adverts...then got to the second person, who also couldn't help me and put me on hold again....more adverts...

So, got to the last person who told me to try my SIM card in another phone to check if it's the phone's fault else bring it down to the M1 service center to check. Not much help at all. Didn't even bother to offer to check if the line in down or not like the Starhub one. Maybe cos I told him i'm just the daughter? Cos he first addressed me as my father but after I corrected him, I sensed a subtle change in tone. Like i'm not important or mature enough to be calling him. He even had to tell me that I need to go service center with my father in case anything wrong with the SIM card since itz under his name. Maybe i'm thinking too much and he was just telling me in case I really didn't know?

Anyway, that's not the main factor that made me prefer the Starhub customer service. Though calling Starhub by some weird accident (I swear I dialed 1627!) brought me to a machine voice and number pressing before talking to a human too, the first person I talked to could already help me. But in the case of M1, had to go through 2 people to get to someone potentially helpful. And Starhub's musical hold tone is also nicer than M1's ads lol...

And I just tried re-inserting my SIM card again. It works. I don't understand this at all. First time this happened to my phone. hope it doesn't fail again.