Atomictumor

Man, oh man, I hate customer service.

Ironically, because I do phone tech support for a living, and am “the other guy on the line” at least a dozen times a day for the past, oh, seven years.  Even more ironically, I detest being on the phone.  I don’t mind so much when its in a professional capacity, but I reeeeeally hate being the normal guy having to talk with the professionals, because I know their tricks, their tone of voices, I know what they’re typing, and what kind of software they’re typing it into.  I know their “escalation” line is really just a guy getting $.50 more an hour who’s been there for a month, and is on average about one or two months from quitting in disgust.

I’d rather go to the dentist.

So, imagine my delight when I got something in the mail from Sprint, telling me that what I thought the deal between me and them were, isn’t really the deal at all.

Lemme explain:

So, around this time in 2005 we decided to get a new cellphone contract.  For the first time, we wanted to have a his/hers cellphone arrangement, to do away with that tricky text message over the internet business when we wanted to communicate (and the cell was our only line).  We found an affordable plan from Nextel, with two new phones.  I did a cursory bit of research, and we bought them.

3 months later, Sprint bought Nextel.  Or merged.  Or whatever.  Bottom line is, those friendly Nextel people are now Sprint people, and after 3 weeks of trying, I gave up on trying to make them commit to a promise to have 10 bucks a month off for the first 3 months, like their ad said.  They had some loophole, whatever.  10 bucks.  I get paid more than that an hour, so its difficult to justify spending that much time on the phone trying to save it.

However, we now knew who we were dealing with.

So, time goes by, and its not a horrible plan, but a two year contract is a long time when theres a $250/line termination fee.  Then BJ dies, and well, I only need one phone.  I wanted to get on Verizion for various reasons, so I started talking to Sprint about what my options were.  Since both lines were in my name, they weren’t jumping on the idea that BJ’s death = not needing a line = not having to pay a termination fee, and I can sorta understand it.  They were kind enough, however, to limit my lines to 5 bucks a month each, with no phone access.  So, I’m paying 10 bucks a month to ride out the contract.

Whatever.

Found out today, tho, through a nice colorful brochure sent out by Sprint, that the 5 bucks a month deal is a ’seasonal pause’, and that my contract still has the same 6 or 7 months left on it, that I’ll have to pay to get out from underneath these bastards.

Nice.

So, not sure where to proceed.  I should lower myself to calling these jackels and trying to score a shutdown of BJ’s phone, and then just pay mine off.  That’d be the smart option, as I’m well aware, but dammit, I hate giving these people a bone.

What I want to do is change my name to Rodrigo Cantilever Jones, dye my hair, and never pay the bastards.

Grr.  Customer service.

Imagine my shock and supreme disappointment when I woke up from a good sleep, stretched, looked at the little weather bar on my google and registered this fact:

What? 40s for the high? 20s for the low?

I did a quick scout out the window to ensure that we are NOT, in fact, in Sweden, because as I understand it, everybody in Sweden is either

a: A music star
b: Rich
c: Amazingly Freaking Beautiful
d: Thor the Thunder God

While I did see some guy outside swinging a hammer, I shortly realized that it was just Lou, the Hammer Swinging Weirdo two doors down, and he’d somehow found my pink hammer (thought I had it put up).

So, hmm. This tends to crap on the heads of those that did not heed warnings to have heaters fixed earlier in the winter. And then the crap would freeze, and nobody wants that.

My plan:

Well, hell, I don’t have a plan. I guess I’m going to, once again, blame it on the weathermen. Or Sweden.