When it comes to cell phone providers, I've tried them all: Cellular One, Voicestream, Value Telecom, Cingular, Nextel, and T-Mobile. Over the years, phones have certainly evolved. While I once sported a Nokia that was almost 8 inches long, today's cell phones are smaller than an index finger and sport cameras, video downloads, musical ringtones, and e-mail. For all of the break-throughs happening in today's telecom market, I still can't figure out why they can't make a phone that simply receives coverage everywhere, all the time.
I've been on the (landline) phone all day with T-Mobile. Since last night, my service has been down. No phone calls. No emails. No text messages. I've already called them twice today to figure out what the problem is and how long I can expect to be without service. Apparently a tower is down in Belchertown (2 hours away), which is affecting the Boston area. I find it hard to believe that I am the only T-Mobile customer without service that hasn't been jamming their customer service lines. If I were T-Mobile, I would definitely get cracking if thousands of pissed off Bostonians were berating my customer service reps.
True to their training, the most recent customer service rep I spoke to read everything off her queue card, word for word. She assured me that I would be up and running within 21 hours. That will make my total time off line approximately 26 peak hours. Since I pay approximately 43c per peak hour to use my phone, I figure that T-Mobile owes me $11.18. I have a feeling that despite my inconvenience that I'm not going to get a credit on next month's bill.
Mobile phone companies fit into the same category as Comcast, Verizon, and your ISP when there's a problem: "hey, we'll get to it when we get to it". I think as consumers we expect the stuff that we pay a lot of money for to work all the time. Unfortunately for all the money we pay on our monthly utilities, we lack real options, especially when the cell phone companies lure us into extended contracts by offering us cheap mobile phones. I refuse to sign a two year cell phone contract because in my mind, that's a committment. I can't even keep a boyfriend for two years, never mind the same Blackberry. The cell contracts you sign are pretty ironclad, and impose huge penalties and fees if you try to back out early, even if you're annoyed about their lack of cellular coverage. Hopefully T-Mobile will be up by tomorrow afternoon, otherwise I'm switching to Sprint.
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2 comments:
Ewww, yeah cell phones suck and seem to have fallen into the business that I call "mob" related. Just like cable companies, there is nothing you can do, and they will fix the problem when they can. They don't have to do shit, because well you are theirs. It sucks big time, and I admit I fall into the trap of not paying $200 for a cellphone but will gladly hand over my sould to get that cell phone for free. Oh well what can be done?
I went with Virgin Mobile, who apparentely contracts with Sprint, I've never had any problems, just the annoying Virgin Mobile website, which tries to be cloyingly "hip" ,,Just give me what I want, spare me the "cutesies"
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