Paul Annett

A couple of times one of our Macs has inexplicably dropped the Airport wireless connection to our BT Broadband HomeHub, and refused to rejoin it (even though the other Mac remained online).

The error message when attempting to reconnect to the network says something like:

There was an error joining the Airport network BTHomeHub-XXXX
[Try again] [OK]

I have the simplest of fixes:
put a $ in front of your password

I’m taking a moment to document this here as I couldn’t find this info anywhere else online. It’s not in BT’s troubleshooting guides or FAQs, and I ended up phoning their helpline for advice.

If you found this page when searching for a fix, please let me know if it works for you!

There’s been a niggling suspicion in the back of my mind several times recently, when refuelling my car. At the petrol pump I fill up to, say, £15.00. But by the time I reach the cashier, it mysteriously costs me £15.01.

The first few times I let this go without a second thought. Fair enough, it’s easy to misjudge and not spot the pump ticking over that extra penny. But tonight my suspicions were raised. I caught a glimpse of the cashier’s screen, and every person who had refuelled had a total price of £XX.01.

Could petrol stations really be stealing 1 penny from every customer? Some may notice, but 1 penny isn’t worth complaining about.

But in the course of a day, if this speculation were to contain any truth, the petrolium companies would be stealing thousands of pounds straight from our wallets.

Has anybody had similar experiences? Please click here and leave a comment at the bottom of the page.

I’ve never met anybody who sings the praises of O2, the phone network Apple have disappointingly chosen to exclusively offer the iPhone in the UK. Once upon a time I was an O2 customer, but the experience was so bad that not even the iPhone will tempt me back. I was an ‘online’ customer, which meant suffering their awful, error-riddled website, because no in-store representative could even talk to me about my account, and I refused to call their premium-rate customer support number to talk to an incompetent call centre buffoon.

It doesn’t fill me with confidence that even after the iPhone launch has been announced, O2 have such disregard for Apple’s customers that the left-hand navigation on their website is missing when viewed in Apple’s Safari web browser (the browser built-in to the iPhone). If you do get an iPhone in the UK, don’t expect to use it to check your bill online*.

Even more annoyingly, when I filled in their contact form to report this issue, I received the following email:

Thanks for getting in touch.
We’re really excited about the iPhone - for the most up to date information we recommend you visit www.o2.co.uk/iphone or www.apple.com/ukstore
If your query doesn’t relate to the iPhone, please reply to this email and we’ll help you further.

…so, essentially: “Nobody will read your message. If you really want us to read it then try to remember what you typed in our online form, and type it up again in an email.” - thanks O2, how helpful of you.

* I’ve just installed a beta version of Safari 3, and discovered that the problem doesn’t happen. Safari 3 will only be on a very few web developer’s Macs at the moment, so most of the world still sees the broken site - and it wouldn’t even be a hard thing for O2 to fix.