Signing With The Devil

I've sold my soul to the evil that is Softbank for another two years.

Previously having bought my iPhone outright, I was free to leave my contract at any time without penalty. If I leave within this time now, I have to pay a 9,975 yen cancellation fee. Am I nuts?

Yes.

The bone they threw me was a monthly discount on the "unlimited" internet usage from 5,985 to 4,410 yen.

The promotion is called "iPhone for Everybody" where they give the 8 gig for "free", and the 16 gig for a little more. The catch is actually paying it off throughout the contract with the phone cost discounting (in the case of the former, to zero).

I was a little peeved they discounted the actual handsets, but hey, Softbank are evil like I said although, I have to say the girls on the English help line sound kind of cute.

I'm sure with the new, possibly 32 gig iPhone, Softbank will think of another way to screw their current customers.

Customer Service.. *sigh*

Speaking of.. Last night I bought a secondhand Artec Se-Adl analog delay for 4,480 yen to use with my tube amp from Ishibashi.

I tried it at home and felt a little disappointed. It was definitely sucking tone and making my amp sound weak, noticeably with the internal tube overdrive. Also with gain, the pedal added another layer of noise that at volume would be quite undesirable.

I was running it directly in front instead of the fx loop, so I'm sure this would've made a big difference, but I didn't have any other cables to test this. In contrast my Crybaby still rocks my world.

Anyway, I decided to return it for a refund, before they'd have the excuse that I had it for longer than 24 hours. As usual the process was like pulling teeth, but luckily playing the dumb gaijin, they relented and gave me my yen back.

I said it before, don't buy anything in Japan that you might ever consider asking to refund. It's a lesson I'm still yet to learn.

In other news, today's three and a half hour adult class went surprisingly (to me) really well.

Three cheers for me!