While I have no proof or research to quote from, I am pretty sure Italians must rank up there as some of the friendliest people in the world. Learn a couple of words or phrases in Italian, and they are very happy to assist you with anything. Only one company has let the nation down - Vodafone - as I spent days trying to get my expensive prepaid SIM card to work.
My tale of sorrow and some lessons learnt:
Day 1- When I arrived in Italy, the plan was to hire a car and use my BlackBerry Z10 phone's maps to navigate around. Why pay the rental company an extra 120 euros for a GPS?
For my mobile phone plan to work, I would need a SIM with data loaded on it. Contrary to various forums, at the Venice airport there are no cellphone outlets. The nearest Vodafone outlet is at a shopping mall about 15 minutes from the airport, in a place called Marconi. At the Vodafone shop, the sales person spoke a little English and explained that in Italy you can not make your cellphone device a hotspot, so if I wanted to have my tablet connected too, I would need a specific SIM for that.
I landed up purchasing a SIM for my phone for 7 euros, which gave me 500 minutes in calls, 500 SMSes and 2GB of data. I also purchased a tablet SIM for 25 euros, which gave me 5GB of data. Plus, I had to pay for the SIMs too, which all totalled 40 euros. At a rough calculation of R13 to the euro, that works out at around R520!But this was still cheaper than hiring a GPS, and I would have my devices connected to the Net, which is what us techies need.
I was ready to hit the road. I piled the family into the rented car and I fired up my Z10 Navigation. It routed me to my destination without too much trouble. Navigating the autostrada (highway) is straightforward and the BlackBerry's excellent mapping kept me on the right track.
What I also liked about the BlackBerry maps is that they gave me the traffic information en route, as well as announcing the street names I needed to turn into. This meant I could keep my eyes on the road and verify the correct street name, instead of looking down at the device. If you know how the Italians drive, you know you need to keep both eyes on the road at all times to avoid the thousands of scooters.
So far, so good.
Day 2 - I was about to leave a water-park to head back to the hotel, and my phone had no data available. I got a message in Italian that I could only assume meant I was out of data. This can't be possible, as I had the SIM for less than 24 hours. Luckily, I had my Galaxy Note 8, so I could use that to navigate back to my hotel. When I switched that on, however, I got the same SMS saying I have no more data.
There is no way I used 5GB of data in 24 hours on a tablet that only has Google Maps, as well as 2GB of data on my BlackBerry!
I called customer services, only to realise that apparently Vodafone has not heard of the English language. There was simply no way to change the menu options on the IVR into English. There was no way to tell the system that I didn't speak Italian and needed to have my SMS sent to me in English (or any other language). I spent very frustrating hours trying to speak to any human operator to help me solve my no-data problem. However, no matter what number I called, no matter what I pressed 1 for and 2 for, I could not get to speak to an operator. I even tried just pressing 0 or 9, hoping... but that did not work either. Looking online for solutions only resulted in more frustration. The Vodafone services in Italy speak Italian only.
I found their Twitter handle and sent them a message asking for help. I received a tweet back saying that someone would call me back in two days time... eh... this is how I am navigating Italy? No data is a real issue and two days time just seems way too long to wait.
Day 3 - I still hadn't found anyone or any online article to assist, so I attempted to convince the kids that we would head to a new shopping centre as part of our Italian road trip, but they could see right through me, and countered with an ice-scream request after I found a Vodafone store.
At the Vodafone shop, after explaining my problem, I initially got the "you must have used your data" look, but when I showed the sales assistant the various SMSes, she agreed that indeed it was not possible. After repeatedly calling the company's own internal call centre, she eventually got a hold of someone who tried the oldest trick in the book: "Switch off and on again in an hour." As I can't argue in Italian, I did just that, and amazingly, it did not work. No kidding. I then went back to the shop and they told me to update my setting to a new APN. When I did it, the tablet data came flying back. I was told maybe I changed it? The old APN settings were: mobile.vodafone.it. The new APN settings were: web.omnitel.it - not even close enough for me to guess those.
So, I had the tablet working, but my Z10 data was still not. They couldn't help me with this issue, as the 7 euro promotion was so popular they were only taking support queries via their forums. In Italian! Problem! Did I mention non-parle Italiano? (I don't speak Italian.)
Day 4 - By now I didn't trust this data service at all. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. In order not to get stuck somewhere in the Italian countryside, I needed a 'plan B', which could get me to my destination and at the same time save my data costs. I decided to save data costs by setting up the entire destination on Google Maps from point A to B, while using the hotel WiFi. As long as I didn't get lost, the system would keep tracking my movement on the road, with or without data. Obviously, if I took the wrong turn, it would not reroute me without data. The other backup idea is that when I was in the hotel, I would use the WiFi to set up my route, and then take a screen shot of the direction of where I was going. In the event that the data stopped, I could navigate with the direction screen shot.
Now, I fully accept that the entire world doesn't speak English. I fully understand that when you visit a foreign country, they have their way of doing things. But this is Vodafone after all - one of the world's leading cellular providers. Surely I am not the first non-Italian to have issues? Surely they can route calls to India or London or some other country for English speaking people to get support?
In my travels, I have found that in South Africa, in the Netherlands, in the USA, in Israel, you have language options when you call customer services. Once you select English, then all the menus and operators speak English.
What was very frustrating is that not only did I pay R520 for connectivity I could only sometimes use, I was now in a position where I was not getting anywhere with Vodafone, and had to make a decision to start all over again with another company. And spend another R520 just to get online.
PS: I am still waiting for that English speaking customer services person from Vodafone to call me...
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