A lucky Twitter user came across a pamphlet the other day outlining some great deals on smartphone services.  These people will go through the painstaking task of installing your smartphone apps for you at the low low price of 1,000 yen (US$12) an app!

In fact, they offer a wide range of useful services, such as installing Facebook, Twitter, or Skype— also for 1,000 yen each!  And I always thought those were apps too.  Boy, is my face red. I’m going to leave it to the professionals from now on.

The original tweet describes this business as a “rip-off service for the technologically incompetent,” by which I assume “rip-off” is the new way young people say “awesome deal.” You know, how “sick” means “cool,” and “hey you dirty old man get away from me” means “you sure are sexy, keep trying to talk to me.”

The range of services offered is too wide to type out in full, but here are some examples:

Install 1 App                                           = 1,000円 (US$12)
Install 10 Apps Together                        = 4,500円 (US$55) *What a steal!
Setup Your Smartphone                        = 500円 (US$6)
Install Twitter                                          = 1,000円 (US$12)
Setup Speed Dial                                    = 1,000円 (US$12)
Data Backup (Synching to Computer) = 4,000円 (US$50)
15 Minute Smartphone Lesson             = 1,500円 (US$18)
OS Version Update                                 = 1,500円 (US$18)

And additional charge of approx. 300 yen (US$4) applies for setup required after installment of applications

And here I did all this stuff by myself like a sucker.

Taking into account all the updates and apps I got with my iPad (and assuming that I could learn to do it myself after they “backed up” my data once), my current configuration would have set me back 111,000 yen (US$1,373).

That really would have been a small price to pay for the approximately 30 minutes of total effort it took me to do all that.  I probably would also have taken advantage of the 1,000 yen “antivirus,” which for an iPad, must entail sprinkling holy water and uttering incantations.

So if you have a computer illiterate loved one, just let them in on this convenient new service – and don’t be expecting any Christmas presents from them this year.

Source: Hyokan Sunday, Twitter