“$800 cell phone bill, how can that be right?” We’ve all been there on the phone with Sprint arguing that the roaming charges applied to our account while we were in Mexico are bogus. Good faith bargaining leads nowhere forcing us to ask for a supervisor in the cancellation department.
A few ‘do you mind holding’ and a few more hours of negotiating and our bill is magically reduced to a somewhat normal level.
This week has been a week of hell in the world of telecommunications for me. Recently, Sprint has found it suitable to charge customers their full monthly bill while providing zero service in their homes. Even their VOIP service, which routes calls through a user’s cable modem stopped working. With no texts coming and the inability to make phone calls, I called Sprint to tell them of my crippling problem.
What was their reaction? I’m sure you already know. Hours later I was at the AT&T store asking for pricing. Here’s where things get tricky. Currently, I have a Blackberry Bold 9900 with AT&T that used to be a symbol business and commerce. Now, the reaction I get from everyone is, “You still have a Blackberry!” I keep this gem of a phone around not because of its amazing app store and interactive web browser, but because it has a keyboard and most importantly unlimited international data plan.
AT&T knows I love this relic so much that they will not allow me to upgrade unless I want to give up my unlimited plan. Therefore, I am stuck carrying two phones; one for voice and apps (used to be iPhone now it’s a Samsung S5, no wait it’s a HTC M8, no it’s . . . they are all crap) and the other, the Blackberry, for international travel.
With no solution at AT&T, I moved onto T-Mobile who says their phones come with international roaming but only at 2G speeds and even those connections are capped. So I went to Verizon who also did not offer an international solution and wanted my first born in exchange for their communist red map of service which brought me right back to Sprint and no service in my house.
Globalization is the buzz word these days only if you do want to engage in international trade be prepared to swap your life savings in order to make the deal with your global partner.
To all service providers, the professor would like to say, good riddance but my phone just dropped the call.
