A Rant

I try not to rant too often, but here's something that bugs me....my phone has been cutting out a lot on people and dropping calls. It's to the point that I have to tell people I'll call them back because I can't hear a thing. I even called customer service to complain, I mean report the problem, and the call was dropped, proving my point, but solving nothing. So I ran into the friendly little neighborhood Cingular store. The guy there wasn't much help at first. He gave me a phone number to call and seemed to be shoo-ing me out of the store so he could get back to whatever video game he was playing in the back. I was pro-active and asked if we could call from the store since I don't have another phone and probably couldn't get through on mine. He was more helpful at that point, but why did I have to ask? I remember the days when I wouldn't have been assertive enough to do that.

Anyway, I talked to the warranty people who said they'd send a new phone in 3-5 days for no charge. If I wanted it in 2 days, I'd have to pay $7 - 8 (as if this is my fault). So I asked her what they do to compensate for the 3-5 days that I'm paying for service but have no phone. To that she responded I'd have to talk to the store clerk about a loaner phone. Upon hanging up, the store clerk informed me that they no longer have the loaner program due to the 80% of people who never returned their loaners. I guess I could just tough it out with a phone I can't make calls on. But it's the principle of the thing. I paid for all 31 days of service, and I want my 31 days of service, not 26.

I wouldn't be such a stickler about it, but the phone companies are quite the sticklers when there's an error on your end. Like the time - Gulp, I'm almost embarrassed to tell this story - when I opened up my bill and it read $1000! I actually sat in the floor and cried about that one. How was that possible? I paid for 1000 minutes. That's a lot right? Well if you add it up, that only comes to 16 hours. At the time I had a long distance boyfriend and we talked pretty much every night. It really wasn't that much over the 16 hours. It's just that once I hit the 16 hours, every minute was billed at a very high rate. Plus there were some roaming charges that I shouldn't have been charged that they took off. I called to negotiate with them. I'm a good customer and it was just a big mistake on my part. The minutes were all off peak minutes so they were making a killing off my serious miscalculation of time. (Have I ever told you I have no concept of time sometimes). I talked to several different associates on several different occasions. They were only willing to work with me when they found out that my contract was ending soon and I might be taking my business elsewhere. They then cut the bill down to about $500. Much better, but I'm not one of those girls who racked up 300 dollar phone bills in college so it still sounds like a lot. Ironic thing is that guy wasn't worth it. This is the guy who would calculate (out loud) how much it would cost to come see me and usually decided it was too much. How's that for irony?!