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Consumer Reports: Cingular, Sprint Bad Performers
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Dec 11, 2006 12:55 PM
from the and-guess-which-company-starting-with-C-I-have dept.
from the and-guess-which-company-starting-with-C-I-have dept.
dcgirl20006 writes "It's that time again, Consumer Reports is out with the annual cell phone review. And Verizon has risen to the top. And, Cingular, with the most subscribers (post AT&T mega merger), claims it is the company with the "least dropped calls" but consumers say otherwise. What can be done? Provide risk-free 30 day trial period; realistic coverage maps, upfront price disclosure, and end early termination fees."
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So far, so good with Verizon. (Score:5, Informative)
In spite of their mathematically challenged service reps [slashdot.org], Verizon has always been a pretty good company for me. In Atlanta, the coverage is excellent and their prices and plans are fantastic.
I originally switched primarily because Verizon was one of a very, very few companies that refused to participate in and spoke out against the cell phone directory [slashdot.org] telemarketer's dream scheme a while back. It was pretty heavily covered [clarkhoward.com] by our consumer rights media guru here, Clark Howard (second entry). It also helps that most of my family is on Verizon and I can now call them for free.
And, for what it's worth, they did finally concede that $.002 is different from .002 [blogspot.com]. :-)
Unless things change pretty dramatically, I'll probably stick with them for a long time to come.
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Bah, Slashdot stripped my cents mark off the end of the second .002. It should have said:
Re:So far, so good with Verizon. (Score:4, Informative)
Their email support actually works.
And where i live, the Sprint gets me 4 bars, while Verizon would stop at 1 or 2 bars.
Most importantly, my friends say Sprint is actually pretty good.
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Then, I turned on the Blackberry and actually tried to use it for a phone call. What was I thinking??? It sounds like cr*p, it drops calls and does so in a slow, painful noisy way. And, what's up with that d*mned noise I hear whenever it's near anything with a speaker???
I have to admit, 3 out of
Re:So far, so good with Verizon. (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:So far, so good with Verizon. (Score:5, Informative)
GSM uses a TDMA scheme, where each user is allocated a timeslot and transmits only in that timeslot. This "bursty" nature of the transmissions is why you often hear interference at the same frequency as the GSM frame repetition rate. (I forget the exact rate.)
CDMA is a different scheme. It operates by assigning each user an orthogonal or semi-orthogonal code. (If I recall correctly, CDMA codes are not quite orthogonal, but are very close). As a result, instead of transmitting short bursts in their assigned timeslot, all users transmit continuously at the same time in a manner that allows the base station to seperate out their transmissions.
Note that there are multiple CDMA-based implementations: cdmaOne aka IS-95 (2G) , CDMA2000 (2.5G/3G depending on which specific CDMA2000 variant), and UMTS, which is 3G GSM
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they did finally concede that $.002 is different from .002
No they didn't. If they did, they would have adjusted his bill to 72 cents. Instead they did a full refund (what I would expect), apologizing for the situation, but never ever admitting they said something patently false, just implying that he wasn't understanding them correctly, and a full refund for a show of good customer satisfaction on an isolated incident. Clearly the callers making several calls to different reps have shown that verbally Verizon reps are saying a very incorrect thing (.002 cents
The Problem with Verizon (Score:5, Informative)
That being said, I feel that their disabling of their phones is ridiculous. The Motorola E815 that I purchased has numerous features that have either been disabled or crippled. Sure I can hack it, but that's not the point. It's one of the few reasons I have considered switching to someone with a more open policy regarding usage. Also, I pay significantly more than my friends/family that use Cingular/Sprint.
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Re:The Problem with Verizon (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:The Problem with Verizon (Score:5, Informative)
However, I was pissed about the lack of real OBEX profiles, and then when my camera lens just shattered mysterously one day (No, I have no idea how) they wanted me to pay $100 for a far inferior phone if I was to replace it. So, we both said screw it, took the $350 hit on the early termination and went to T-Mobile. The coverage with T-Mobile is definitely not as good as Verizon's, but the plans are far better. We're paying more overall for our new phones, but now we've got the BlackBerry 8100 "Pearl" which is just an amazing piece of hardware. Nothing crippled, and at least I know it's lacking full OBEX support for a damn good reason - security as a corporate oriented device instead of a money grab. Unlike a lot of early BlackBerry devices the speaker and microphone actually work really well, and if it's any worse than the E815's excellent sound quality, it's not enough that I remember it from my first days with the Pearl.
I won't do business with Verizon anymore, period. They might have the best service area, but at least I don't feel like I'm supporting a company that actively wants to screw me.
And on a tangent, my workplace just got me a Sprint PPC-6700 Windows Mobile 5.0 brick. I hate this phone. It's a crappy PDA combined with a crappy phone in a form factor the size of a lumpy can of sardines. The only redeeming feature is Terminal Services Client, and let me just say that's no fun to use when you need to pan around a 1024x768 or 1280x1024 desktop at 320x240. No goddamn fun at all. Fuck Windows Mobile.
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Re:The Problem with Verizon (Score:5, Insightful)
> We both had E815's through Verizon and loved the phones for the build quality, the hackability and the design just being a -solid- one
WE HAD VERIZON AND LOVED IT
> However, I was pissed about the lack of real OBEX profiles
BUT WE WANTED THE FEATURE "OBEX"
> took the $350 hit on the early termination and went to T-Mobile
SO WE SWITCHED TO T-MOBILE
IT COST US $350
> The coverage with T-Mobile is definitely not as good as Verizon's
THE COVERAGE IS WORSE
> We're paying more overall
WE ARE PAYING MORE
> it's lacking full OBEX support for a damn good reason
WE STILL DON'T HAVE THE FEATURE "OBEX"
Ummmm.... congratulations on your wise move?
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Re:The Problem with Verizon (Score:5, Funny)
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My experience has been the same. I live in the NYC metro area, and work primarily in that areas as well, though I do a fair amount of travel.
I originally used the old AT&T TDMA service, pre-Cingular merger. The service was not great because AT&T had oversold their network, so lots of calls didn't get through due to congestion.
I switched to T-Mobile for a few months. T-Mobile was a great deal as long as I was in cities. coverage was spotty in suburban areas and even worse in rural areas. Thi
Verizon cripples Bluetooth (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, I can order a USB cable (and did). Yes, I can find a tarball out there that will allow me to hack my phone to re-enable bluetooth. But in the end, I'm a consumer who just wants his damn phone to work without having to hack yet another item.
When my friend's Cingular Bluetooth phone immediately
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Amen to your amen. My company has an office in a large downtown office building on Peachtree St, and we use Cingular exclusively. Even on a high floor near a window, GSM devices don't work very well.
That being said, there's a reason why we cho
Big City versus Rural? (Score:5, Informative)
I do like Consumer Reports and I think they do carry weight in their expertise in terms of national products on a national level -- cars, consumer equipment, home equipment, etc. I won't buy a car or a washer or a TV without at least reviewing what CR has to say. But if CR was to try to shoehorn local service into a nation-wide review, I don't think I would consider it trustworthy. For that, I'd contact people in the region and see what they use.
My father recently switched from T-Mobile to Cingular and he is actually happier -- better coverage in HIS region (objective), conversation quality seems better (subjective), and he hasn't had one dropped call versus T-Mobile dropping about 5% of the calls in HIS region. But in my area, Cingular is terrible.
Sure, the report (for subscribers) offers some city-wide ratings, but again it is too generic to really understand or use as a relevant way to pick a carrier. Also, it is important to realize that while "nationwide" can be broken down in multiple ways, it is still an overall general region. The Chicago area that I live in totals about 30 regions from urban to suburban to exurban to rural -- and all of them are rarely used by the same user. For a cell phone user, talking to me (in the burbs) means little if they live in farmland, so why would they care what the overall national service quality is when what matters most is what others in their region use and are happy with?
I am a fan of CR and other free market regulators (they offer opinions, you are free to choose based on that variety of opinion out there), but in this case I think they fall short of need. I do like them in terms of rating customer service, which is definitely NOT region-based or specific to one local market, but produces a reliable review of the company as a whole. I think that is where CR shines: in terms of letting us know about specific problems with their customer service center or with their contracts or with their pricing schemes. But in terms of overall reliability, I think this is more aggregation where aggregation is not appropriate or even considered valid.
I won't ever switch to Cingular myself because of two reasons:
1. I've had friends who have had terrible luck with their call center for help.
2. Bad contracts as compared to other cell phone manufacturers.
T-Mobile has the best customer retention department imaginable, and they seem to care because of the follow-up calls I've received. I also love their handset replacement plan as well as their optional insurance plan which I've used twice in 5 years. T-Mobile has made sure I am never without a working phone, and when I have had problems, they've worked to fix it. For me, that is still secondary to knowing what works in what markets/regions that I use, and CR just isn't appropriate for that purpose.
Sidenotes:
Early termination fees are VERY important when you're getting a $200-$300 handset "for free." Just returning the handset does not cover the commission paid to the dealer.
Upfront price disclosure is important, but it really should be up to the buyer-side of the transaction to understand what they're getting into. If you're not sure, ask a friend to help you.
Realstic coverage maps: What is realistic? I've never seen a coverage map that is consistently right -- things change, and conditions can be effected by new construction or even weather conditions. They can al
Tagged "Pay2Read" (Score:5, Insightful)
(Cue "Slashdotters don't RTFA" jokes now)
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Besides, from the number of res
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Re:Tagged "Pay2Read" (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you're half-right, anyway.
Parent
Ask a trucker (Score:5, Insightful)
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I used Sprint for about 2 years recently, and did not have any great complaints about them. Of course I had a plan with unlimited roaming, so I was using the Verizon network much of the time!
Yes, they do.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Not just verizon with the bad math.... (Score:3, Funny)
Good enough for me. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
About 2 years ago they started telling me that I need to upgrade my SIM card. They kept sending me new ones in the mail- none of which worked.
Finally I went into the store, and got the new card. I was assured that it would improve my reception. Okay, cool, nothing wrong with that. (it would switch me from their older system to the new one they bought from AT&T)
Now I can't use my phone in my
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At least your network isn't getting turned off (Score:3, Insightful)
They just let us know that they are going to raise our rates ahead of cancelling our plan and shutting off the TDMA network we've been using until now. I'm a bit annoyed- we actually get better reception than almost anyone in our neighborhood and I can't replace the plan. It was a "totally unlimited calls for $60/mo" deal that I've never seen anywhere since. TDMA phones are tan
Cancelling Termination Fees (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, yes, yes, and maybe not.
Remember that the cost of the phone is included in a contract, and that's why you get the termination fee if you cancel early. Even if you explicitly banned early termination fees, they would introduce fees for paying off the phone if you cancel the contract early that would be eerily similar to the termination fee. I guess it would be more explicit to the user though. Worse could be they keep the contract fees the same, but you have to pay in addition for your phone.
The 30-day trial period should be enough to find out about service issues that you wouldn't know about until you had the contact otherwise.
Then again, I'm not in America, but a couple of the same issues occur in England.
I'll stick with Cingular for one reason, roll-over (Score:2)
My normal travel route is west across the state and north to chicago. Not a single dead sport with Cingular. That can't be said of the other networks.
Same networks? (Score:2, Insightful)
So unlock cellphones... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So unlock cellphones... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the phone company thinks it's ridiculous too. They would much rather have you pay the $200 for the cell phone up-front than get the $200 from you over a period of 24 months or if you cancel. They would much rather have you pay a $50 or $100 activation fee than get that back over the course of 12-24 monthly payments. To a phone company, $360 now and $25/month is FAR better than $40/month with a termination fee.
It's the same reason you get 'huge' discounts for registering a domain name for 10 years - that's money in the bank for the registrar, and they'll make more money from you getting you to pay early than 'charging you more' annually.
The problem is, if I tell you that to get my cell phone plan, you have to pay me $240 for a phone and a $120 activation fee (to cover the costs of acquiring you as a customer) and I'll give you service for $25 month, you won't sign up with me. You'll go to the company that charges $40/month, with a 'free' phone and 'free' activation.
Well, maybe YOU wouldn't, but most people will pay $40/month for cell service. Most people will not pay $360 for cell service. Most people don't HAVE $360 to pay up-front for cell service. The cell companies are only giving people what they want.
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Really [newegg.com]? Or, do you mean that all phone sold by providers must be locked?
Re:So unlock cellphones... (Score:4, Informative)
It's obviously legal to sell (and purchase) an unlocked cell phone in the US. If you learned this in training, you were told incorrectly.
The absence of physical stores that carry unlocked phones means nothing with regard to the legality. It does, however, say volumes about low demand for unlocked phones. An average customer of yours would find little use for a cell phone without service, which is why you don't sell unlocked phones.
The legality of unlocking a phone you received from a specific carrier, however, *has* been called into question before. Here [wired.com] is an interesting article regarding locked phones and how it is now completely legal to unlock a phone you received from your carrier.
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I know I'm a slashdot oddity... (Score:3, Interesting)
Beat that!
For best coverage in YOUR area... (Score:5, Interesting)
T-Mobile has gotten SO much better... (Score:4, Interesting)
The euqation is two-dimensional. (Score:4, Insightful)
Consumer Reports is Flawed (Score:4, Informative)
Essentially, Consumer Reports methodology is inaccurate - almost to the point that random chance would have provided as good a result. For example, if I claim Cingular and Sprint are good and Verizon and T-Mobile are bad, I'm pretty much as accurate as their report saying that customers like Verizon and T-Mobile. Customers like Verizon, followed by Cingular, followed by T-Mobile, followed by Sprint. That's accurate and I have REAL data over a sample of MILLIONS to back that up.
Only Covers Contract Service Providers (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure there are others here that prefer to remain disconnected from the world when not at my work desk, and only carry a cell phone for wife/family/emergency use. I just changed providers this week and have my own (very brief) review of the pre-pay providers.
I had been using Cingular's Pay-As-You-Go service, with by-the-minute pay rather than the monthly charge. (Actually, I had been using AT&T's pre-paid service until the merger.) I was on Cingular's CDMA network, which they are shutting down April 1. Cingular offered a choice of two new GSM phones for free for me to use to remain with them, but both phones were featureless and looked similar to the now-clunky Nokia phones of the early part of the decade. (That probably speaks more to Nokia's stagnant development, but Cingular still chose to buy and offer that product.)
I chose not to stay with Cingular in part because I was offended at the offer they made me, and in part because of my past service.
- While I have few to no problems with dropped calls, my wife says that she often has to dial 2-3 times before the call will go through. (The other times, it goes straight to voice mail without ringing.) This likely has to do in part with my phone (one of those ugly Nokia models) and part to do with the network (Cingular hasn't invested in their CDMA network in years, instead investing in GSM).
- I was more concerned with the expiration dates for their pre-paid minutes. AT&T offered 635 minutes with a year of expiration for $100, which is about 15 cents a minute. Cingular's $100 offer was 400 minutes, with only 180 day expiration. Given that I talk about 30 minutes a month, the loss of minutes was not so bad, but the expiration made the product useless. Instead I bought $25 for 100 minutes @ 90 day expiration, and had to buy another one each quarter. (They also shorted me a day every time I refreshed.) I think Cingular just changed the $100 card back to a year expiration, but it was too little too late.
Looking at other providers, I considered both major carriers that offer pre-paid plans, and the pre-paid only providers.
- Verizon's pre-paid plans cost, at minimum, $1 a day for service. The Verizon salesman at a Dallas Circuit City, to his credit, recommended that I not go with them as it would be too expensive for my needs.
- The Verizon rep instead pointed me to Amp'D mobile, which he said used the Verizon network. This would have allowed me to get a major-model phone (like a Motorola Razor). I didn't chose Amp'D because I don't want a phone with a camera (I attend 2-3 movie festivals each year, including one this past weekend, and I would have to surrender my phone if it had a camera), and I didn't really need a phone that still costs $200 or more for my pre-paid service. They also charge $0.25 cents a minute, and (from their brochures) would require quarterly fill-ups to avoid expiration.
- Cricket wireless has been advertising their pre-paid service in my area. They offer service here in Austin, but don't serve Dallas/Fort Worth where my family lives and my wife and I travel each holiday.
I chose Virgin Mobile, as they seemed like the best service for me:
- They offered nice-looking phones at reasonable prices. I got a Vox 8610, a nice flip phone without a camera, for about $25 from their website. The reviews I read about this phone before I ordered it were generally positive.
- They use Sprint's network. Despite the Consumer Reports publication, in 3-4 days of use I have yet to miss or drop a call. I am even able to receive calls and text messages while the phone's antenna is down, the phone is in my pocket, and I'm sitting down, which is an improvement. (Yes, the p
Another Virgin Mobile customer (in his 30s!) here (Score:5, Interesting)
I had to post a reply after reading that.
1. Near-perfect anonymity. You don't even have to give Virgin Mobile a name when you activate your phone. Buy the phone with cash at a physical store, complete the activation of the new cell phone using another phone and their automated system (use a payphone and dial Virgin Mobile's 800 number to do that for a paranoia level of anonymity), and you're as close to being a completely anonymous cellphone owner as is possible today. Continue buying "top-up" cards with cash at physical stores, and you'll maintain that anonymity.
2. Awesome service reps. Let's face it, few places are perfect, but I've had the best luck with VM's call centers amongst those I call with any regularity. The staff are typically a younger bunch, but they're the bright kind of younger, you know?
3. They actually understand local number portability, and how to make it happen for their customers. I transferred my land line number (so long, Verizon bastards!) to a second VM cell phone. The transfer was completed in less than a week, and it worked flawlessly. The service rep (see above) I spoke with when arranging the transfer was absolutely on the ball.
4. Some of their phones have an easy hack for blacklisting incoming callers. Here's the cool part: if your VM phone can download ringtones, you may be able to set up a blacklist...
After I started receiving faxes from a pool of about 20 different phone numbers at all hours of the night, I phoned VM's customer service and asked if either the VM service itself or my phone supported blacklisting (i.e. block the fax machines that were calling me). The rep was apologetic and told me that no, unfortunately, neither the phone nor the service had that capability. So I asked him if my particular phone supported downloadable ringtones. A bit confused by the sudden change in topic, the rep said that yes, it indeed supported that. And so I asked if by any chance -- amongst the collection of thousands of ringtones VM outlines on their website -- if they happened to have one that played complete silence. The rep immediately got where I was going (see my comments above about bright service reps)
Anyway, the representative immediately got what I was trying to do, thought it was a pretty damn cool approach, and then proceeded to take about 15 minutes hunting through VM's massive database of ringtones. And guess what? He found one -- a ringtone consisting of pure silence. The rep pointed out that the only downside was that, like all their basic ringtones, it would cost $2.00 to download. I told the guy that was the best deal for some silence I'd ever been offered! Now I have my blacklist.
Seriously. Virgin Mobile is awesome. I don't normally go out of my way to offer much praise for any corporation, but I've been so impressed by what I get for the money I spend with them, that even the occasional glitch I experience (rare) just
Parent
Had ATT, became Cingular left for Sprint (Score:3, Informative)
Then came cingular. My service became irregular as they decommissioned the analog towers before new GSM towers were up and running. They kept pressing me to "upgrade" my phone and used vaguely worded scare tactics that old phones were the devil (I loved my multiband Siemens S46). They "lost" the ability to unlock AT&T phones, something AT&T would do if you planned on traveling internationally. They discontinued my plan in favor of a "better" one that had more mintues but a later "unlimited" period. They refused to apply my company's employee discount unless I renewed my contract. The last straw came when they started mucking with the billing system and I got overage charges despite being well within my monthly limits.
I'd avoided Sprint b/c at the time I went with AT&T their phones were crap, IMO. The data service was new and the phones were high on glam features but with horrible battery life or form factors. This time I went with a Treo 650 with the unlimited data plan. Service is pretty good, though at times in the rural areas it doesn't match AT&T. Data speeds are surprisingly good, in the 128kbit range, which may be limited by the Treo's ability to process the data.
My boss got a Cingular Treo 650 at the same time. His was a nightmare. Data connection to the towers was great for software updates (I saw close to 220kbit when I downloaded service patches for him) so the Treo GPRS was pretty good but Cingular's internet connection was crap. It took upwards of 5 minutes for his Treo to synch email from our corporate mail server; mine would do it on Sprint in ~15 seconds. The Cingular add-on software kept trying to take over his phone functionality and if the unit reset or the battery went dead it would re-default to the Cingular-specific apps instead of the standard (and much superior) Palm programs.
Sprint CS is kinda spotty when it comes to the technical questions but nothing compared to Cingular, who were basically unable to comprehend that data != voice service and went to great pains to avoid transferring me to an engineer or data tech. When I did get to the Cingular engineering group for my boss it took several minutes to explain that "I can't get to a particular server using the domain name but I can using the IP" means their DNS is borked. Even then they never, ever, never called back when they said they would and "open" complaints would mysteriously becomes "closed" after 3 days.
Nope, I hate Cingular. Sprint is okay once you accept that most of the "free" phones are crap but that goes for Cingular too.
Good News! You people don't care ANYWAYS! (Score:5, Informative)
None of you really care all that much about the service. It's the phone you are interested in.
First of all, according to market research, nearly all of you are in complete and total denial. The internal company documents that I saw pointed to "Handset Dissatisfaction" as the number one reason for churn (the % of subscirbers lost in a given quarter). People care about the phone they get. They care about it as a fashion accessory and as a social interaction machine.
Here's my favorite part: no one ever admits it.
In fact, if this get enough mod points for people to read it, I can almost guarantee that there's going to be a slew of "Well, that's not why I bought the phone..." posts behind it. No one was honest about it. Being a fan of psychology, I'd often see how much I could make the customers squirm with this issue. I'd show them the phones, we had a bricky Nokia and a black Motorola clamshell (it's a clamshell phone, not a flip; it doesn't flip. it doesn't even half-flip, it opens... like a clam). I would tell the customer that the Nokia had better reception (it does, proven by internal company memos I saw), was more durable (it was, we rarely had any in the return bins, and I had a whole folders' worth of anecdotes about Nokias surviving), and was the phone I recommended to anyone who cared about features and substance over style (it was and still is).
Needless to say, everyone bought the Moto. It was notorious for breaking, had awful signal (a good 2-3 bars worse than the Nokia), a screen that cracked under the slightest pressure (it got SO bad and SO prevalent that the company actually had to begin covering cracked LCDs UNDER WARRANTY for this particular model, if that tells you anything). I couldn't give the Nokia away, and believe me, I WAS. Both phones were allowed to be sold for free (if it was required to close the deal, and it usually was), but I could poise the Nokia as a free phone, and the Moto as costing $50, because of the flip, and people would still pay for it. Even after I told them that I recommend the Nokia for reception and durability.
People gots ta have that flip shorty!
So my point is, while you try and tell us that what you want from your cellular service provider is good coverage, you don't. Not really. Bad wireless coverage is something we've all come to expect, we hardly even notice it anymore, or get bothered because it happens. What really drives customers into the store ISN'T the company, it ISN'T the service, and it damn sure isn't the cost. No, you, the customer, came to see me because I held the key to what you really wanted: a mobile phone that, like your Lexus, told everyone how big your penis really is.
You'll apologize for my overly cynical attitude, but quite frankly if you're a wireless customer that has gone into a retail store, I'm certain you're one of the people I learned to despise so easily while working there. Oh yeah, one more thing while I'm here, hey NUMBNUTS, the phone's not REALLY free! We subsidize the cost. We don't walk out back and pick one off the tree. They cost money. So when you destroy yours within 2 weeks of purchase, maybe the question you ought to ask isn't "Why did I get this for free two weeks ago and have to pay a hundred bucks now?" but rather "Why do I persist in owning things when it's clear that I'm not going to exercise any responsiblity during the course of my ownership?"
God I hate the wireless industry. Go ahead, feed the greed. Go get your RAZR or Chocolate or whatever schlock marketing scheme that you're busy NOT falling for. Trust me, the wireless companies have your number, and they are routinely screwing you in the ass and laughing about it, because you know what? You can't hear them. You're too busy talking on your Treo/RAZR/Chocolate/Blackberry/Sidekick/SLVR.
Whatever. There's not point to this post. There's no way to fix the system, and there's no way to get people to
Verizon is the pits, too. (Score:3, Informative)
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Damn right they're typing their best.... marketing and fine print to make sure users are screwed and get charged as much as possible for the least possible amount of service.
I don't need TV, radio, phone, MP3, blah blah blah on my phone (and get charged for it up the wazoo)... I want *SERVICE COVERAGE*
OP is talking out of his ass (Score:3, Informative)
There are lots of hacks floating around for cracking OBEX. It seems to be faily trivial if you have the right cabling.
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no moral compass...