A few days ago I bloged about what I felt to be a rather interesting characteristic of our modern culture. That would be the existence of even more communication technology and what I perceive as a desire to do exactly the opposite. After conversation with my cell phone company and recent experiences with SPAM, I am less perplexed. I find myself wanting to sever all communication ties with society as well. In this blog, I am going to share my newfound understanding of "Sprint Sense". (I am going to write a series of blogs on SPAM in the near future.)
First of all, you will need a little background information. I live in Cleveland, which also happens to the poorest major city in the country. My girlfriend and I are both college students and not necessarily financially wealthy. Living in Cleveland, however, anything above the poverty level puts you in the upper half of the population. In other words, my income is considered "not that bad". My girlfriend is very good with our limited funds but things are nonetheless rather tight financially.
The other piece of background information is that I split my time between two residences. My girlfriend lives on the near west side and I have a place downtown. We share her car and bus frequently.
The above two points considered, it should make "sense" how important an economical cell plan is to me. My objective is simple. No landline and the cheapest possible cell phone. I look over the monthly bill and try not to buy more minutes than I actually use. If my usage would change, I adjust the plan accordingly.
My needs changed recently regarding my phone. Two things happened: My girlfriend moved to the near west side and my work schedule became primarily third shift. My daytime cell phone usage is now nearly nothing. I am now using just under 300 peak minutes per month. Logically, it made sense to switch to the 500 minute a month plan verses the 700 minute one I currently had.
I did what any geek would do. I hoped on my cyber board and surfed to Sprint.com, used their handy dandy web site and changed my plan. There problem solved... Not exactly, I still needed to call them. Seems their website has no method to file a service complaint. It seems that my cell phone doesn't want to work at my girlfriend's place which, frankly, totally defeats the purpose of owning one. The other side of the line sounds like they are talking through a fan and so do I, at least, according to what little I can hear (Since my girlfriends phone from Alltel works just fine, I am pretty sure it is not a "dead zone".)
Looks like a call to "customer service" was needed. Now, if your wondering why I quoted those two words it is because after my dealings with them I question if that title is not false advertising. Now the first "service" was a series of voice activated menus which are basically useless on a phone that is not good for talking on. Just to reassure me that I could not be heard, the non-person voice asked me to repeat my self about four times before it finally informed me that it could not understand me and was going to connect me to a human being.
Thus begins my conversation with the "customer service specialist" who, due to her name and an accent so thick that a chainsaw wouldn't cut through, I gathered was Hispanic. (I have to wonder if this is a job requirement for Sprint. The machine asked me if I wanted Spanish instructions.) I explained to her what the problem was. She informed that Sprint was aware of the problem and that their "top people are onto da top of it".
I told her that I have had the problem since the first of the year and asked her how soon it would be fixed. She informed me that the top people would fix it as soon as possible and that Sprint has been aware of the problem. She gave me the impression that they were aware of it before the first of the year.
Now I know that what has transpired so far it likely not that surprising but... She then proceeded to ask me if I would like to add more minutes and/or features. I replied that that made no sense. I, however, was corrected. It made perfect sense for the lager the quantity of minutes I bought the cheaper it was per minute.
Now I do understand that she is, most likely, just doing what Sprint trained her to do but when I reemphasized the fact that I can't use the minutes I have because I can't talk on the phone she reiterated that it would be cheaper per minute. I was not talking to a "customer service representative". I was talking to a tele-marketer. It was about this point in the conversation that I expected Rod Sterling beep in.
The telemarketer then asked me if I wanted to take a customer satisfaction survey... My response... "Oh Yeah! Bring it on!".
This all happened about two weeks ago. I still can't use my phone. I also got my bill today they billed me for 700 minutes. I am going to make another phone call. I am afraid.
