Dealing With Corporate America

I bought a blood-sugar test device a while back that had a rebate form inside for about $30. I started filling it out, and my pen failed, so I grabbed another pen. That pen failed.

Then I tried the two pens on other paper, including other paper in the packaging for the device. Both pens worked.

Somehow, they had treated the rebate form paper so that ball point pens would not work on the forms. I still don't really know how they did that.

I'll go you one better. I have Verizon as well. A year ago, my internet and home phone went out. I called customer service. They said they'd look into it. Two days later I get a text saying that it is fixed. It is not. I call customer service. They tell me that according to their data it is fixed. It is not. This goes on for two weeks until a friend tells me about a state govt agency (this is in NY) that polices cell phone service and that I should file a formal complaint. I do so. The next day, a Verizon magager calls me apologizing profusely and saying that she is going to personally take care of my problem. Next morning, problem fixed.

Cell phone companies are a racket. Between them and the govt, govt gave me much, much better service!

....until they tell you for some reason or another that your rebate is not valid. And then will not give you a reason your rebate is not valid. Then you give up because you know it is valid but you cant get a valid reason from them. But they have your money and you cant get it back. Maybe you can file a complaint with your state's attorney general's office. Sometimes the complaint is forwarded to the company, but it depends on if your state actually cares about that type of stuff.

I'm not trying to bring praise to Sprint or anything. Their customer service sucks. But at least they have some sort of customer retention type of plan. You need to get in touch with retentions by calling and complaining and threatening to cancel your service. For your situation, Sprint may be willing to giv you the Nationwide plan but give you a credit for the difference in price. We usually have been able to keep the current price per month via discounts and such as long as we reup for another 2 yr contract. If the representative is feeling really nice to you, they will allow an instant rebate instead of the mail in one, and waive the connection fee.

Of course regular Joe and Jane customer will not go to the lengths to find out what they will do for the customer...but sometimes if you know the right buttons to push you can get what you want. Not the way it should work, but that is the way it goes.

Kevin,
You are about to have an even worse experience. Go read the fine print on your mail-in rebate literature.
I'll bet a sixpack that you aren't going to get 50$ back with your mail-in rebate... if your experience with Verizon is the same as my recent one, what you'll get back is a 50$ credit to use at Verizon (not valid on billable minutes though) and NOT the 50 bucks the salesman said I'd get.

I guess I fall into the category of people who don't find this remarkable. I'd bet Verizon doesn't offer your plan anymore - all of their plans are Nationwide™ now. But where the cable company would have just raised your rates, Verizon can't (won't? I'm unclear as to the vagaries of cell phone regulations) change your contract as long as you're plugging away month after onth, so they offer you incentives to get you on a plan that makes them money. As far as cell phone company sins, this is pretty minor.

(I'm in the same boat with AT&T, and plan on continuing to plug away with the phone I got in '05 on the plan I started in '03 until I'm finally tempted to give Apple more money for shiny toys.)

I use a Virgin Mobile phone that is pay as you go. I don't spend more than $20 every three months. However, I only have a phone for people to get a hold of me when I am not where my land line is. My phone has text messaging, which I only use to communicate with my 19 year old grandniece. It has some games that I play when I am waiting for people who are late. I just refuse to get into those contracts which are totally incomprehensible; thus, proving to me it is NOT a good deal. I once had Comcast who did my internet, TV, and phone. However, my cable went out and then I not only couldn't watch TV and work on my computer; but, I couldn't call Comcast to tell them all my services were down. And, that was before I had my cell phone; but, I don't want to be on hold with this cell phone. Now, my land line is always different from my cable and internet companies. But, I feel that all of these corporations I am doing business with are doing their best to get the absolute most money out of me without giving me any more than something minimal.

A free market would be great. That's not what we have, though, especially when it comes to cell phone service. You basically have a choice of which of four different providers you would like to rip you off.

Verizon appears to use obsolescent CDMA connectivity though it may be in the process of switching. If you had a GSM provider such as At&T, you would just buy a new unlocked GSM phone from Fly-by-Night Fones. [They tend to be a whole lot cheaper than identical ones on offer at the Telcos for some strange reason.] Insert your service provider's GSM chip removed from defunct phone into your new phone [takes less than 10 seconds]. End of story but for one thing. If you take your GSM phone to Bongoland, you can buy a pay-as-you-go GSM chip there for peanuts and put it in your phone while you are there and talk to the Bongolese at will, possibly about obsolescent mobile phone service standards back home. Being Number One is hard, sigh.

I have T-Mobile pay as you go 10 cents per minute this is as cheap as many monthly contracts. I come to England once a year(I am here right now) so I use the same phone just switch sim cards, 15 p. a minute but you are not charged to receive calls. I may need internet this week, here they have pay as you go 3G wireless from the mobile phone companies for 15 pounds a month and it works well. I think it will be a long time before we see that in the states.

...giving us his take on how great telecoms are and how shitty government is.

Telecoms are highly regulated AND receive significant subsidies from the government. There are no free markets, and telecom is certainly one of the least free.

And of course, everyone except Reagan Junior and apparently hundreds of badly educated and rapidly aging white Southern teabaggers knows that our government will have no monopoly on health care under any plausible scenario (such as, you know, one of the various health insurance reform bills passing).

I add to this that my personal experiences with Social Security (they are REALLY nice people--my wife is disabled), the IRS, et. al. have been pleasant, efficient, and exemplary.

I contrast it to the basically "fuck you" attitude I encountered when I moved to California a decade or so again and had to deal with PacTel in LA. Those people are assholes.

Oh yeah, modern industry (where the margin cost of goods is close to zero) is all about pricing/contracting games. Bleck!

That $100 was almost certainly a trick to get you back under contract. You may want to return it. A Verizon prepaid phone bought at Walmart or Target will work fine; you can switch your account to it online.

Let me strongly advise switching to prepaid! Some of my household phones cost less than $3/month; and none more that $30. But, since you already have a verizon phone PagePlusCellular is fantastic - the Verizon network at a fraction of the cost. If your out of contract them call them up and switch. If you call/text _a lot_ get their $40/month unlimited; if not then just toss a $80 card on the account and schedule in your calendar to add a bit more every four months.

Buy phones on eBay. Or, buy the "right kind" of prepaid phone at Walmart or Target.

T-Mobile prepaid is great because once you get it rolling you only need to refill once a year; and it's cheap too.

Got Change writes: "The second point is that you had a bunch of other options rather than sticking with Verizon; you could just have replaced the battery or switched to another carrier. You won’t have that ability when government runs healthcare."

Got Change: liberals are perfectly comfortable with the free market. We're the ones who are fans of anti-trust laws, after all.

We're simply not blindly ideological about the free market. In other words, for us it's not a religion.

Anyway, your point about lack of choice in health care is absurd. Most Americans have very limited choice in the provision of healthcare, because some 90% of those with private health insurance are stuck in managed care plans, where in essence a gate-keeper appointed by their employer decides which medical services they can utilize.

This is in stark contrast to, say, a French person, or an American on Medicare, who for the most part can see any doctor or visit any hospital or get any treatment they need -- all paid for by taxes.

A free market works great -- usually a lot better than a government-dominated one -- in lots of areas. Unfortunately health care ain't one of them.

Apparently Reagan JR cannot conceive of the Internet, where people in widely removed locations can read, and comment, on blog posts.

Hey Reagan, read my lips: I .. do .. not .. live .. in .. San .. Francisco.

Actaully, I'm in your backyard, motherfucker, drinking your milkshake.

>By the time you're finished, you'll have spent time more than worth the fifty dollars they say they'll rebate you--and that's if they actually send the rebate.

The concept is called "market segmentation". The idea is that you can make a profit off the poorer customer, but also want to get highest possible price out of the ordinary customer. How to maximize both?

Mail-in rebate programs. To someone who makes $4 an hour, $50 is a big deal. They'll mail it in, even if the company makes it a pain. Kevin will never quite get around to it, but it'll suck him in anyways. Now they've managed to sell the same device for two prices, openly.

I'm pretty sure they signed you up for iTunes, GPS tracking, instant weather (in case you aren't looking around), and a half-dozen magazine subscriptions. You'll pay for these each month, even if you haven't actually activated them. Check your bill carefully to be sure they haven't volunteered for these extras ('we knew you'd want them').