All of you probably know that I'm not a phone person, and even more than that, am definitely not a cell phone person. I'm one of those people that really shouldn't ever give out a cell number, because people assume that if I have a cell than I check your cell. Ha! Sheer craziness.
With Austin's work in high gear, his cell phone minutes have gone through the roof and he has needed to switch his work phone onto his company's network, which left me the sole member of our family plan.
Cell companies don't cater to people like me: people who use maybe 50 minutes a month (without trying to conserve), who almost never text, and have no aspirations to use a Blackberry/iPhone/etc.
The companies that DO cater to people like me are the prepaid cell carriers, which apparently are going more mainstream for those of us low-techies. So, a few weeks ago I researched companies and made the plunge to go with a prepaid Tracfone. I bought a phone, activated it, put on a year's worth of service and minutes for what would have been less than four month's of the cost of my part of our old plan.
And then I figured out that my phone barely gets reception in our house, or in the tiny town right nearby (where we spend a lot of our mornings). I also found out that only the phone was returnable, but the minutes/year's service was not--which of course made up the huge bulk of what I had paid for. Conclusion: I needed to get a Tracfone cell that got better reception.
It turns out that better reception Tracphone cells exist. Tracphone has two different wireless networks that they buy time on, the GSM network and the CDMA network. The CDMA network works everywhere; the GSM network does not. BUT the GSM network is cheaper for Tracphone to operate on so their policy is not to cell a consumer a CDMA phone if they are located in a zipcode that a GSM one will work. Conclusion: I needed a CDMA phone.
It turned out that getting Tracphone to sell me a CDMA phone was next to impossible. According to Tracfone's maps, I had adequate service--which is true, in some parts of our zipcode... but not true in the rural part of the zipcode that I live in. I was on the phone with customer service a total of SIX AND A HALF HOURS over the course of five different phone calls in order to successfully get a CDMA phone activated with the minutes and service I already bought. I am not exaggerating; it was totally absurd, and awful beyond description.
The lowpoint of everything was after three phone calls and three hours and forty-five minutes on the phone I got them to send me a new phone which they promised would be the different kind that I needed--and instead they sent me the EXACT same phone I already had. I then had to call back customer service and spent another TWO AND A HALF hours on the phone with them in one sitting getting them to send me the right CDMA phone.
I have never encountered a company with this level of inept customer service. I mean, does it really take an hour and a half to reset a cell phone and check it out on the phone to make sure its settings are correct? Do you really need to require ALL technical phone calls begin with this step--even those customers that can prove with a case ID that they've already gone through this step--before proceeding with the issue at hand?
Anyway, I finally have a new, activated cell phone with the minutes I paid for. I feel victorious having triumped over the machine. I also find it funny that Tracfone was so inept in our last conversation that they accidentally doubled the number of days of service I have, so I got something for my pain. But absolutely nothing is worth the six plus hours of agony I suffered on the phone. I mean, have you ever hear of a 2 1/2 hour customer service call??????
