For Weezie

Here is a copy of my previous post in another section. I could go on and on about the things they made us do for the phone company AND the probs I've had on my own. Feel free to add your own rant and get it out of your system! LOL

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Unfortunately most companies have policies that prohibit "really helping" a customer unless that customer gets really irate or makes a threat (like to deactivate service, etc)

Policy in our store was that if a customer threatened to deactivate service, we were to accomodate them in any way possible.

If, for example, you dropped and damaged your phone and it was beyond repair, we could push charging you FULL price for a new one and say that we could not do anything else to help you, but if you complained enough, we had a pile of "trade-in" phones in the back that we could activate to your phone number and we could either charge you $10 and get a little commission or just GIVE it to you outright.

The moral of the story? Sadly, sometimes it pays to be rude. And it ALWAYS pays to negotiate!!! If you don't get the answer you want, talk to a manager!! YIt is RARE that you would ever have to pay FULL price for a cellphone!

You must have worked for Cingular!

I dropped my phone in the pond and couldn't get the water dried out, so I took it to Cingular to get a new one. They had all kinds of phones for $29, but to get it at that price you had to extend your contract 2 more years...otherwise it was about $200 for a new phone. I told them to just forget it...I had 3 phones on the same plan (for the past 8 years)...I said "I'll just pay the bill until my contract runs out in 5 months, in the meantime I'll use the other phones, and when my contract is up I will cancel it." The guy took my phone in the back room and in a few minutes came out with a phone just like it...free.

We got so fed up with he phone company here, we had the phone turned off, and went straight cell phone. We use satellite for Internet.

I don't have a cell phone, but dealing with my local phone company, really gets me worked up!!!! 3 miles down the road from me they can get DSL, but not here where I live and it makes me so mad, I continue to call the phone company about every other month and complain, maybe I am not complaining loud enough??? As it is DSL would be cheaper then the lousy dial up I have, and nothing else is available for my area

Just an FYI, most 'insurance policies' for cell phones will not cover things like getting wet, driving over them, dropping them, etc, etc, etc. So, really, a store has no obligation to do anything when it comes to that stuff. I'm not sure about actual cell phone company stores (be careful of those kiosks in the mall....most of them look like a company store, but are not), but I do know that store like Radio Shack or Best Buy or Circuit City do not really care what happens after you walk out the door. Once they sell you the phone, it's up to you to deal with the company the phone is through.

We are in the same boat Comfrey! I can't get DSL at my house either and they have it about 2 miles down the road for me! I don't know if there is just too much work involved and they don't want to do it for us few and far between country folk or what?!? But, it makes me very mad also! Dial up is so frustrating. I also call my phone company about it all the time and I get nowhere with them! :p :rolleyes:

With my cell phone I'm finding those oh-so-sneaky hidden rates on our statement each month. Example, a long distance call to Alaska (Alaska! Who do I know in Alaska?!) Anyway, it would be a 2 minute call and only a couple of bucks...At first I would call up each month and get each charge credited... but after 6 months of this happening, I just stopped- I mean, me wasting my breath for a 20 minute discussion for $3 here and $4 buck there... but think about this now, my contract is about to run out... I've had the cell phone for 3 years... $3/month equals over $100 bucks for 3 years!

Now if everyone has these charges on their cell phone bill across the country.... geeze.

For those that can't DSL you might try Wildblue Satellite for Internet, that is what we use.

I checked it out and this is what I got.

We apologize, but due to overwhelming demand, we are not currently performing installations in your area.

That is what I get from everybody!

It's seems both the regular phone companies and the cell phone companies seem to think they have us over a barrel. You can't get good service from either of them for anything, and they never have DSL in your area.

We just got DSL about a year and a half ago maybe.....up until then it ran literally about 2 miles away from me, maybe less....but not here...it used to make me so mad, hang in there---they have to keep extending it out sooner or later...hopefully sooner than later.

Loz, last fall, I decided to change phone companies because the one I have now said I could get DSL with them, so I took the leap! Well, it took three days to get it done because they (the phone company) couldn't prove I existed . I even asked one lady I talked to if I was dead and she told me she didn't think so because she was talking to me. Geesh, I finally had to consent to a 3-way conversation with them, the Social Security office and myself to confirm I DID exist! :rolleyes: THEN, after I signed on with them I was informed DSL was not available in my area.

Patti, we didn't have our phones hooked up at the house we just sold. We always just used our cell phones (we don't pay extra for calls to Alaska....thank goodness!) Anyways, the people who bought the house called the phone company to hook up their phones and the company told them that the house didn't have phone lines and that no one who ever lived there ever used phone service there! Now that is a crock since the owners before us used the phone lines!

We dumped the phone company because of their billing service. It was so screwed up I don't know how they ever made any money. We got shut off 3 times in 6 months, if the bill was 1 day late the phone was tagged for shutoff, and when the payment was received we didn't remove the shutoff notice. (We weren't the only ones affected.)

We were paying $65 a month for 2 Cell Phones, and were using about 20 minutes a month. The Phone company sold out and the rates for 1 phone line and DSL jumped from $85 to $113 a month!!! (And that's not counting Long Distance.)

We had already planned to dump the phone before we got that last bill.

The Satellite service costs about $85 a month, it is not as fast as the DSL but we don't have to worry about their billing.

We have a device called a 'Dock 'n Talk' that we plug your cell phone into and then into the wall, so every phone in the house goes in and out over the cell phone. We only have 700 minutes but still haven't gone over that since August.

So by these 2 changes we have saved about $50 a month, and don't have to deal with a really stupid Phone company.