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Well, it appears I won't be getting a new phone after all. I've been trying for a week now to get my contract accepted by Dutchtone, the telco, and threw away two full days on that, but this afternoon I finally accepted defeat and put my money in the bank again. A short rundown of the lost battles that led to the sad conclusion of this war:

• On Saturday morning, the contract had to be filled in twice, as the store employee miswrote about half the entries.
  
• When he was nearly finished, he noticed he didn't have any SIM-cards left, but he called their store in another town close to Utrecht, and I'd be able to pick it up there in the afternoon. When I arrived at a quarter to five, I had to fill in another contract, and after that was asked if I realised that processing it would take at least two hours, so I wouldn't be able to take it that same afternoon, despite what I'd been told.
  
• On Monday, I went to Leiden to buy the phone. Again we filled everything in and the contract was faxed to Dutchtone, but it was rejected as the address on the contract didn't match the address on my bank account notes, a P.O. Box number, because I'd been told in three separate stores that P.O. Box numbers weren't allowed. I heard that at five, so wasn't able to fill in a new contract before closing time.
  
• On Tuesday, the store in Utrecht still hadn't received new SIM cards, even though they had told me they'd be in on Monday, and they again weren't in today, even though they told me yesterday they would.
  
• Today I went to Leiden again, and this time we used the P.O. Box address, which Dutchtone had told me should work perfectly fine. Of course, it was rejected - the reason being the address. When I called them, first I was told they didn't process P.O. Box addresses, and then when I told them one of their colleagues had told me the exact opposite thing two days earlier, they wanted me to provide additional proof that was actually my address - but then they didn't know any way in which I could do that.

So now I've simply decided to give up. If the bureaucratic mentality at Dutchtone is so enourmous they can't even sell me a contract, I'm not going to spend even more time trying to get connected. Maybe in half a year or so I'll try again - but definitely not with this company again.

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