Love Is In The Air... Or Is It In The Signal?

I got a new phone!


Let’s start with a little back story. I’d had the “same” phone since august of 2007. It wasn’t bad at the beginning, but like a dead pig in the sunshine it began to stink, and fast. But I’m a ‘survivor’ if something goes wrong… I’m usually the one waiving a hand and saying something along the lines of, “don’t worry about it, I’ll live.”

And then my phone “broke” I tried to answer my phone and I couldn’t hear anything. The person on the other end could hear me – and my annoyed cursing at my stupid phone – just fine. The speaker in my phone’s ear piece had gone out. So I, having the wherewithal to never ditch my full coverage phone insurance (it’s six bucks, how could you pass that up?) dutifully took the phone to the repair shop.

It took a while for the repair technitians to get what I was telling them… I don’t know how hard it is to understand “The speaker in my ear piece went out” when you do this for a living, but somehow, it took me nearly 15 minutes to get them to understand me. They finally printed up the work order, slapped a rubber band around it and my phone and tossed it on the pile of to-be-gone-through phones. I was sent away with no connection to the outside world and was informed that I should return at the end of the next day.

When I returned, the lovely gentleman who’d helped me the previous day informed me that, “The speaker in your ear piece went out.” I refrained from saying, you think?

Anyway, they “fixed” the problem by ordering me a new phone (the same phone) and sending me on my way a week later with said new phone. Problem was, I could no longer use the vibrate function. They refused to give me a new battery and the old battery didn’t fit quite right in this particular version of the exact same phone. I figured I would live and went on.

One week later, the speaker in my earpiece went out.

I weighed my options. Did I want to go through the whole thing again? or could I live with it.

I decided to live with it. I only had a year left on my contract and I wanted to get rid of that phone and the provider. So I lived with it.

My contract was up some time in December. I wasn’t really sure when, so I planned to cancel it the first week of this year… that is until Christmas day when I looked at my bank account and saw that my new bill (off contract) was over double what it had been just a month ago. Needless to say, I called Monday and had the line disconnected and service severed.

That in and of itself was a process. The first guy I spoke with was courteous and did not put up a fuss about my desire to leave the company and I thought, “Great! Smooth sailing.” Boy was I wrong. He had to transfer me over to an account specialist who proceded to ask me the exact same questions that the other guy had “made a note of” in my account. Then when I informed her of the problems with the phone she went on to tell me that the phone I had was a “Great phone” this time I didn’t bother to be polite about that… the comment deserved the “obviously not” she got.

After 10 minutes of me repeating that all I wanted to do was disconnect the phone and no, I didn’t want to switch to an internet card service, nor would an Android phone at the low, low price of $99 get me to stay with them she put me on hold for five minutes.

When she returned she informed me that the phone would be disconnected at the end of the billing cycle and it couldn’t be turned off any sooner, so don’t ask. A spot of rudeness before she informed me that I wouldn’t be billed for anything unless of course there were overages on the phone… And then she asked me if I’d be able to answer yes to all of the questions on the survey the company would soon be sending me… and I stopped. And this is the conversation that followed:

Me: No, I can’t tell you that I would say yes without knowing what the questions are.
Her: They’re just going to ask you whether I was kind, courteous, helpful and if I solved your problem.
Me: I don’t know, probably… (That sounded like a very short survey to bother with sending out)
Her: You’re saying you wouldn’t be able to say yes to all of those?

At this point I’m annoyed. Customer service should not include grilling your caller in an attempt to bully them into agreeing to say yes to a number of survey questions I haven’t actually seen… and I decide that I’m not going to play into that.

Me: Frankly, telling me a phone is “Great” when I’ve told you I’m having problems with it isn’t courteous, so I might not be able to give you high marks on that point.
Her: You need to understand that everyone has their own opinion. And just because you think that I shouldn’t have said that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.

She said some more things, but I’m not remembering them right now. All I can say is that if she was hoping to get a yes out of me that was not the way to respond to me.

I ended the conversation then, thanking her for her time and hung up. Irritated was not the word for how I truly felt.

How I truly felt about her and this phone is better illustrated in pictorial format.

And then Tuesday brought with it a whole new form of happiness by way of anew phone. I was looking at my options and it was between the LG Vortex and another phone… you know what cast the deciding vote toward the Vortex?

It comes in purple.

Now, I don’t know if you can tell or not… but I like purple.
Exhibit A:

(That's right... my purse, my water bottle, my shirt, heck, even my flash drive is poypul!) 

Anyway, the simple fact that I have a new phone that actually works, and that costs less than the phone I used to have while a) did I mention that it works? And b) has a ton more features. So I think I came out on top this time around.

Now… wasn’t that a fun story?