simple help with phone- question

[Julie Winnard]

Hi -do you offer people simple help with technology, like some community hackspaces I've been told about, please?

I have an acquaintance who sells the Big Issue and is desperate to get their smartphone set up, but not at all IT savvy and has no reliable friends who are good on phones/IT who can help.

She's a nice middle-aged lady down on her luck and can't afford to pay a phone shop to do it, who tend to confuse her with jargon and try to sell her more stuff anyway.

If she came along to an open evening on a Tuesday would someone be willing to give her simple help please?

I can't help her sadly as I my job in London is finishing tomorrow so I won't be in town in future, and I am not fab with phone tech either!

Please let me know and I will get a message to her.

Thanks.

[Julie Winnard]

PS I am too far away to join you with too long a commute up til now but I am hoping to join my local hackspace and help support them. I wish I'd found a hackspace earlier!

[Faraz Sayed]

Hi Julie, tell your friend she can come along to a Restart Party! We are primarily a regular event where people can fix thier electronics with a repair coach in a peer to peer manner.
We have a Restart Party tomorrow 2-5 in Somerset House Victoria Embankment entrance.
We are there today and Sunday also, although we wont be doing repairs, advice is good though.

[JJ]

Coming on a Tuesday would be pot luck whether there was someone around with time to spare so possibly but no guarantee.

It might be worth her trying a Restart Party - there's at least one a week around London in the next month.  It's not quite what they do but if she turned up with a specific list of what needed doing and any necessary details (eg. "connect to Hotmail: take username and password") I'm sure someone would help.

https://therestartproject.org/events/