Anyone who has been subjected to a horrifying blind date will understand the frustration of not having a justifiable excuse to put an early end to the evening.
All it would take is a phone call from a loyal friend to say that they’ve gone into labour and need help immediately, but somehow, it never quite seems to work out so conveniently.
Luckily, Virgin Mobile have recognised this recurring dilemma, and have set up an SOS service whereby a blind date victim can sneakily ring up the company, without saying a word, and Virgin will phone back with a good reason for them to make a sharp exit.
The customer simply needs to answer their phone and repeat what the phone operator is saying to them.
This comes amidst a number of quirky services that mobile phone companies now offer to assist their customers through tricky situations, ranging from catching out snooping partners to avoiding drunken phone calls with ex-lovers.
Virgin’s Text Checkers service is for anyone whose partner is constantly reading their text messages without permission, in an attempt to find any inappropriate or naughty messages.
Customers receive a text from Virgin, under the contact name of ‘Sexy’, but the content is just a reminder to their snooping partner that they should be more trusting and less paranoid. This only works, of course, if the person is actually trustworthy and doesn’t have any untoward messages in their inbox. In other words, the service doesn’t cover up suspicious behaviour!
The famous Dialling under the Influence service is Virgin’s attempts to stop people making drunken phone-calls which would ultimately lead to complete embarrassment.
Customers must plan ahead to make use of this service, whilst sober, by setting their phone to bar certain numbers being dialled until 6am the next day. However, there is a way of cancelling the feature in case of emergencies, meaning that savvy customers can just undo their sensible behaviour when drunk anyway.
For those people on the receiving end of unwanted, drunken behaviour, Radio 1 offers the perfect opportunity for people to get revenge on sleazy men and clingy women.
When someone won’t take no for an answer, people can use the Flirt Divert method; giving the predator a fake mobile number. Voicemails and text messages sent to this number are read out on Chris Moyle’s radio show, resulting in red faces and a lesson well learnt for all those stubborn texters.
Alternatively, people looking for a good bit of banter can use o2’s online Fast Flirting service, which is the Internet’s answer to speed dating. Users have ten minutes to impress their new cyber buddy, and can use virtual gifts to seduce each other, such as drinks and flowers. It’s cheaper than a real date, and there’s no need to use Virgin’s SOS or Radio 1’s Flirt Divert.
Other useful services include Virgin’s Book a Text, which is for people who can never remember their friend’s birthday on the right day! Now, people can write their texts in advance and set their phone up to send the message on a particular day.
And for anyone who has run out of credit, many phone companies offer additional funds for emergencies, such as Vodafone’s IOU service. This gives customers £2 in backup credit for phone calls and texts, which can be paid back next time they top up their phone.
Vodafone also offer an unusual answering service called Respond Plus, in which people speak to a phone operator instead of leaving a voice message. Vodafone then texts the contents of the message to the respondent, so that they can sneakily read them in the cinema or at work.
This doesn’t seem to be much of an upgrade to traditional answering services though, and could result in an unfortunate case of Chinese whispers if the message is incorrectly reported back to the customer.
Another potentially problematic service is Virgin’s Keep Safe, which is intended to calm people down when they are in uncomfortable or dangerous situations.
Customers can ring Virgin up, and hear a number of safety tips about getting home safe at night and public transport information. Yet using a phone in dangerous situations distracts the person from their surroundings, and could result in an unfortunate outcome such as a road accident or robbery.
Lastly, T-Mobile has a quirky text tip for anyone who is tired of their friends not replying to their texts. By putting two exclamation marks at the beginning of the text, people can ensure that the message appears straight onto the recipitants phone screen, rather than just in their inbox.
Likewise, many phone companies, including T-Mobile, send conformations to the sender that their text message has been received by their friend; so there’s no excuse for people not replying now!
By Kay Taylor