I bought a new data SIM card from mobile operator EE a few days ago, to use in my Fujitsu Stylistic Q704 Windows Ultrabook. With the deal came an Alcatel One Touch Pop 7S Android tablet. Nice! It’s a good deal.

I’d like to use that tablet but first it needs charging. And it won’t.

When I plug it in to the mains power using the supplied charger, it shows the battery on-screen as is common with Android devices. But then it switches to show a white triangle with an exclamation mark in the middle. And then it goes blank. That’s all it does. And the battery always shows 2% charged.

I explained all this in a call to EE’s 150 support service yesterday evening. They wanted me to try it in different chargers and charge it for at least 15 minutes each time to see if the problem is the device or the charger or the cable.

So I’ve done that with these charging methods:

• Connected the charger and cable that came with the Alcatel device.
• Connected the charger and cable from a Galaxy S3.
• Connected the charger and cable from a Galaxy S4.
• USB cable to PC.

Same result each time:

1. Battery showing 2%
2. Triangle with exclamation mark
3. Blank screen

The EE support person promised to call me back 20 minutes or so after we spoke, once I’d done a test. She didn’t.

@EE someone from 150 was supposed to call me over 45 minutes ago. I'd like to speak to a senior supervisor please. Contact number?

— Neville Hobson (@jangles) January 8, 2015

So I made the video you see above to show what happens. And I left the device on charge overnight plugged in to the S3 charger. Same result.

It looks pretty conclusive to me, EE, that the device is faulty.

May I have one that works, please?

[Update Jan 15] On Tuesday, I finally got a replacement tablet that works, but no thanks to any pro-action from EE. After trying twice more last week to talk to someone at EE’s 150 support service – patience running thin after queuing for 10 minutes each time – I visited the EE store in Hammersmith, west London, on a trip into London, the place where I’d bought the SIM card/tablet deal a week earlier.

A quick test by a store employee confirmed the fault in the device and a replacement was swiftly agreed. We tested the replacement device – just to be sure! – and it worked perfectly, charging the battery as it should do. And so I left the EE store with a working Alcatel OneTouch Pop 7s Android tablet.

As I mentioned earlier, the data SIM card I have works a treat, and I have no issues at all with the service EE provides: a means for me to get online via their 4G cellular network. I anticipate continuing to use EE’s network well into the future (well, depending perhaps on what happens if BT does acquire EE), just as I have been with their devices I’ve been using as part of the EE ambassador programme that Andrew Grill set up with them in 2012.

What I genuinely hope, though, is that I never have need to call EE’s 150 support call centre number again. A nightmare experience. I wonder why most mobile operators have such awful customer support services via the phone, Vodafone being another one.

A subject for another post, another day.