Cell Phone

Cell phones are driving me insane. You may recall the story about my daughter running up $150 in instant messaging charges on my wife's cell phone. After that incident, she lost the privilege to use Mom's cell phone but gained the responsibility of six months laundry service. And then, out of the blue, they came home from Target with a new pre-paid cell phone.

Somehow I got convinced that a pre-paid cell phone would be okay for a twelve-year old. Somehow I justified that it would teach my daughter fiscal responsibility if she had to pay for her own cell phone minutes. Alas, this hasn't been the case. It looks like the pre-paid phone is costing even more. So much for pre-teen fiscal responsibility.

But the story gets even worse ...

In addition to paying an exorbitant sum per minute for the pre-paid cell phone (yeah, we knew it up-front, but I wasn't there when that purchase decision was made), I'm still paying the monthly charges for my wife's phone. And here's the kicker. My wife lost her cell phone. Now maybe lost is too strong a term. Lets just call it misplaced. But the darn phone has been AWOL for about a month now.

Along the way, I've been miffed at T-Mobile. When my daughter first ran up that horrid IM bill, I called to see what they could do for me. After bouncing around in their phone system for ages, it turned out that they could do nothing. They couldn't turn off the IM service to that phone (to prevent it from ever happening again) and they refused to negotiate a reduction in the bill, even if I switched to a different plan. I got different stories from different customer service reps (maybe they need a new CRM system), but the end result was the same. No reduction in the bill.

Needless to say, I could not afford the extra charges. The cell phone bill rolled until they finally shut off the service. I wasn't too upset at this, as I've been stuck here at ranchero indebto and haven't needed to use my Sidekick. And with my wife's cell phone missing, we weren't missing anything by not having any service.

Eventually, I had to call T-Mobile to get things straightened out. This time, I got through to an extremely helpful customer service rep (CSR). Extremely helpful she was, but she still wanted the money. Knowing that my wife's phone was at the end of its contract, I brought this up with the CSR. The fact that the phone was missing made my case a bit stronger.

The CSR kindly gave me a $35 "Valued Customer Credit" towards my whopping cell phone bill. A small gesture, but a gesture nonetheless. While I appreciate the thought, I'm still left with a bad taste in my mouth.

Why do cell phone companies feel that they can operate like casinos? Why should they take advantage of their customers with pound foolish policies that would make both PT Barnum and Bugsy Siegel proud? Cell phone service is a commodity. A sucker may be born every day, but there are more than two cell phone companies to take 'em.