Well it's been a marathon but Ann and I have finally got our new mobile phones from Cyta. It all started out calmly and rationally, and I ordered online (to get the discount) and the next day Cyta telephoned me. The girl with the American accent who called told me that, because I was not a Cypriot, there would be a €500 deposit for each phone. I asked whether this was discrimination but she did not seem to understand what I meant. She told told me I could get a document from the Ministry of the Interior in Nicosia, which would alleviate the need for a deposit. I said I would think about all of this and asked her to call back the next day.
No call came and so I decided to see the lovely Leonides in the Polis Cyta shop. I popped in and outlined the scenario. He immediately told me the girl was wrong and he would quite happily waive the deposit and fill in the form stating that I was a Cypriot resident. Here was the first hurdle. He asked me for my passport and it is, of course, out of date. Big problem as, when he entered the number on his computer, it was refused. Not to be outdone, I drove back to Argaka and collected Ann and her passport. Back to the shop we went and all was fine until he asked for the IBAN for our account, which was required for the Standing Order. We hadn't got that but I popped down to our bank, which was about two hundred metres away, and returned with the number. A short while later and Ann was the proud possessor of her new mobile.
Back at home she started to experiment with it and set it up with email addresses and Google passwords, so that she could enter the Google Play Store, where all the apps can be downloaded from. The next day I telephoned her but got no response. A few minutes later Ann telephoned me and said she had been unable to work out how to answer the phone. Fabulous.
Today Savvas and I went down to the Cyta shop and he smoothed the way. The contract was in his name, and the Standing Order was paid by us. I half expected the mobile I had decided upon to be out of stock, but he produced it out of a drawer as if by magic. During the time I was in there I was aware of an increasingly irate and rude German giving the girl on the front desk a hard time. Apparently he had purchased €30 of credit, but when he went to use the phone today it told him he had no credit left. The girl was incredibly patient but he just got more and more aggressive. (I remember when my phone dialled from my pocket - in the days before I learned to lock the keyboard - and exhausted my credit). In any event he was still ranting and raging, with quite a queue behind him, when I left with my new phone. As Leonides told me, customers were either polite or rude. The staff in the bent over backwards to help the polite ones but the others ...
So now I am sitting impatiently for my new phone to charge, drumming my fingers. We are off to the Bowling Alley later to play with our friend Pam. It is about 45 years since I last played. We shall see whether time has been kind or not. Ann and I are just hoping there is automatic scoring.
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