2013 D-Bag Awards Round One: Phone vs. Cable

Welcome to the 2013 D-Bag Awards where I personally make it my mission to ignore most of the facts and share personal opinion based on what I could find on the Internet in a race to make it to post.   There's my disclaimer.  Here's Round One.

Phone Company Giants vs. Cable Company Giants

On one hand we have companies like Xfinity and TWC.  Xfinity keeps raising their prices but not their services.  They bungled, yet again, a customer service issue I had at the beginning of the year and now, they plan on adding an additional $1.50 “Rebroadcast Fee” to my bill.   TWC decided to black out CBS because of a contract dispute over carriage fees for programming.   So…  one company charges you for content that you don’t get to see, the other decides to just pass the costs onto the customer without a trade off for services.   On the other hand, phone companies have decided to be douches by tacking on the “upgrade” fee when you switch to any phone.  Cyber Monday saw people looking to save money on a brand new, free, LG G2 phone with a waived upgrade or activation fee but only on a new lines of service.  If you were simply upgrading you existing phone, you got the phone for free, but you still had to pay $30 to be a loyal customer.   And when asked about the reasoning for it, I got two responses: 

Rep -“It’s because it’s a smart phone.” 

Me –“So, then I’ll take a regular phone.”

Rep – “That’ll be $30.”

Me – “But it’s not a smart phone.”

AND

Me – “A couple years ago, they didn’t charge this fee.”

Rep – “Yeah, well the economy isn’t as good as it was 2 years ago.”

Me – “Really?  That’s why Verizon’s profits were up in the billions over the last three years.  Damn economy.”

http://bgr.com/2012/07/19/verizon-q2-2012-earnings-profit-sales-smartphones/

http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/21/verizon-reports-strong-q1-earnings-27-billion-revenue-2-2-m/

Not to mention,  there’s that whole “we gave your info to the government.”

Winner – Phone Companies
Yeah, I made it truly personal on this one, but then again, so did they when they decided to violate personal privacy and be douche bags about their practices.  I get it, I paid nothing for a phone, but the upgrade fee is a gimmick to make money, plain and simple.

Textually Active

Mongo don’t text.

OK, that was true about five years ago.  In fact, I held out on getting a cell phone for as long as I could.  I think the first one I ever had was an LG flip phone from 2004.     I was 29…   To that point, I waited until I was 27 to get a credit card.  I lost that battle when I became a homeowner.   I regret what my balance is today.  Evil little plastic thing!

Even with that giant leap in gadgetry I resisted texting.  For one, I have meat hooks.  Banana hands.  Flippers.  All the dexterity of an oven mitt.  For me to get my plump digits to correctly type out a message using nine numerical keys, waiting for the right letter to pop up or T9word  suggestions takes too long.  I could call you, have the conversation, talk about nothing for ten minutes, and be done before I hit send on the first text.  Secondly, why would I have an entire conversation  this way?  Emails can be long and contain multiple ideas.  Texts are basically you spamming a keyboard with  “OMG”, “K”, or “WTF?”

However, these days that has all changed.  I have become a little more adept at texting, though some days it’s like playing the Game of Thumbs, I win or I diet.  I miss words, it takes forever to spell something out, and I have only advanced to an LG Cosmos.  I’ve had it for probably four years, now.    Why do I not have a Smartphone?  Because my bill is only $92 a month and that covers three phones, texting between two people and enough minutes to never run out.   If I move up to a Smartphone, I will probably increase my charges 3x and the temptation of using a Smartphone like most people do will become a problem…  Remember my credit card issue?

Now, as far as texting goes, I do only get 250 a month.   In the past that wasn’t a problem.  In fact, I didn’t have a texting plan before 2012.   If someone sent me a text, I paid as I went.  Then, we opted to get 250 for an additional $5.00 a month.  Which, wasn’t too bad.   Of course, my wife decided that she needed to up hers to 1000 last year for an additional $5.00 a month.   That’s another story for another time.   Still, I maintained my 250 limit and was fine.

Until it was not fine.  In the past year, I’ve found myself going over my 250 threshold and it feels like I’m breaking the law.  Actually, I was getting treated like a common criminal for doing so, with no reason.   With no conTEXT, there was a lot of speculation.   Turns out, I have friends who text.  I work in IT and we text issues back and forth.   I am on the hook for being an application admin and when it breaks and I’m not around, I get pinged.   Sometimes people text me an entire thought, one word at a time.   Don't ask me why.  Still, even at its worst, I’ve only ever gone over my 250 limit by no more than 10 texts.

Now, how bad is that?  Why don’t I just up it to 1000 and pay the extra $5.00?   I could.  It would be no skin off my nose.   However, when I look at my average amount of texts per month, I’ve gone over maybe four times in a year.    Like I said, I’ve never gone over by more than 10 texts.   Beyond my limit, I pay as I go.  That whopping overage is $0.10 a text.

So,

four months at $1.00 per month = $4.00

OR

12 months at $5.00 per month = $60.00

Now who is smart?  Eventually, I will have to get with the program and get a new phone and new plan.   I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.   Not to mention, they want you to pay them $30 just for the privilege of paying for a new phone and staying on as a customer.   Mongo also doesn't double dip.  If you want me as a customer, show me the money.   Waive the fee, upgrade the phone, and let me pay like I should, for a phone and a plan, not for loyalty.

Yes, my phone sucks.  The reception sucks.  Half the buttons don’t work.  It’s not cool.  I look like that old guy in the commercial “Two cans and a piece of string!”   But, hey, I have $56.00 extra in my pocket a year to spend on worthwhile things.  Remember when we actually used phones to call people?  Those were the days.

Here's What I Can Do For You - Smart Phones are Making us Dumb

I am one of the few remaining people in the civilized world that does not own a smart phone. I am as much of a gadget geek or tech head as anyone but for some reason I feel like smart phones are going to be the downfall of humanity. But, I’ll get to that diatribe in a bit.

As far as mobile phones go, I rock an LG Cosmos provided by Verizon. Prior to that it was the ENV2 which is now a piss poor Game Boy since I couldn’t transfer the games I paid for to my new phone. And, before the ENV2 it was a standard LG flip phone. I don’t even remember the name of it. I didn’t want that first phone. In fact, I lobbied against getting a cell phone. I didn’t need to have one. If I wasn’t home for someone to contact me, it was by design. I was at work, or out and if someone needed to get a hold of me, they would have to wait. It was my wife who made me get a phone. She was worried about me driving to and from work on the back roads of Deer Central, Southwestern PA.

So, I begrudgingly got one and I barely used it for anything but a few calls and mostly pictures. I have a generous plan with a lot of minutes and hardly scratch the surface of those limits. Then, I started texting here and there and eventually had to get a text plan which consists of 250 texts per month at $5.00 per month. I barely reach half of that on a regular basis.

Then, I got a call from Verizon Wireless looking to upgrade me. They wanted to upgrade me to a smart phone, offer data plans, and do all these wonderful things for me. They said all this after they examined my account and saw that I hardly used what I had.
“OK, I see you have an LG Cosmos which came with your plan at no extra charge.”

“Yep.”

“We can upgrade you to one of our whiz-bang-smarty pants-phone made with a space age polymer and smells of strawberries. You can take pictures, text, use the internet, make a cartoon cat repeat everything you say in a cute voice, scan bar codes and find information that you didn’t care about before, search Google, make light saber noises and you can have it for $499 with a rebate of using it for a two year contract which makes it $99.00. Does that interest you?”

“Um, I’ve paid nothing for my phones since I started getting them, so, no.”

“OK, well, I see you use roughly 90 of your 550 minutes plan each month.”

“Yes, that sounds about right.”

“OK, here’s what I can do for you… We can upgrade you to that whiz bang phone that costs $99 and you get 700 anytime minutes for $69.99 for two lines. Does that interest you?”

“Um, no. I hardly call people now.”

“OK, well, let’s take a look at your data usage. You have 250 texts a month for $5.00. Of that, you use roughly 60 a month.”

“Yep, that’s pretty accurate.”

“You also have pay as you go MB usage of which you haven’t even used the Internet from your phone.

“Yeah, I don’t go onto the Internet from my phone.”

“OK, here’s what I can do for you. We can upgrade you to that whiz bang strawberry smelling phone and offer you unlimited texts and 2GB data allowance for $54.99 a month. Does that interest you?”

“Um, no. Look, you can see what I do with my phone now. Pretty much nothing. So, why would I pay more when I don’t do any of those things?”

“OK, understood. Thank you.”

Look, I understand that they are TRYING to sell me something. But, when you look at my account, which they do before they call me and SEE I’m not doing anything worthy of upgrading, there’s really no point in calling me, now is there? But then again, there’s no point in calling people, who are consistently going over their limits and paying a higher rate for the overages, to offer them savings. Because it’s more money in Verizon’s pocket.

Outbound calls are all about attracting new services and businesses, but there needs to be a smarter analysis of your existing customer base or you run the risk of alienating them more when you bother them with services that they clearly don’t even use that much. If you want to get someone into a higher bracket, examine the ones that maybe go over once in a while or come close to that overage. These are people that probably would entertain the idea of upping their plan in order to pay a little more but save a lot in the end. Don’t go after the little fish in the big pond. Go after the fish that is almost too big for his small pond and offer him a bigger pond where he is now the little fish once more.

But, this is why I probably would never make it in big business. I’m too concerned with the customers’ needs and not the shareholders’.

OK, now my rant. I’ve actually go on about some of this before… but that was REALLY doom and gloom stuff. This is a little more sarcastic.

Smart Phones are making us dumber. There was a time when having a mobile phone meant your parents had a rotary phone in the kitchen with a 100 foot tangled mess of cord attached to the handset. You could literally go into the garage and still be on the phone. After the wireless phone came into play, young kids could freely run through the house without the fear of being strangled by the cord that was stretched across the living room doorway.

Then we had pagers which sent us an alert to find a stationary landline to call whoever paged us. Cell phones that freed us up completely to communicate with anyone, anywhere, and at anytime. Eventually, texting became available. Now, we could have conversations without having to speak directly with someone. Email… for your phone. Human interaction became sterilized and devoid of emotion save for the few emoticons that litter the textual landscape of messages. Not content with having to be in front of a computer to surf the web or play games, phones began offering the ability to completely disconnect from reality… sometimes while driving.

We can now exist completely online with no human interaction at all. We can shop, learn, play, and communicate all from a phone. Moreover, there’s no need to even remember anything because our phones have access to the Internet. Phone numbers? That’s in my contacts. Useless facts about movies, sports, and history? You can now unload that from your brain because you can access it at a moment’s notice via your phone. We could lose all sense of direction because you can install an app that functions as a compass. And now, with the introduction of the iPhone 4S, we don’t even have to do any the searching for those things. We simply ask Siri, “What’s the capital of Iowa?” To which Siri should say, “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you mean. Iowa doesn’t have a capital.” That’s a veiled Family Ties reference if you’re older than dirt, like me. Go ahead, use your smart phone to look that one up. I dare you.

Not only are smart phones making us dumber, they are allowing us to do dumber things, like texting and driving. Smart phones have turned us into lethal weapons out on the road. Even though it’s illegal, I see people every day in their cars texting while driving. It’s supposed to be bad to even be on a cell phone without a hands free device like a Blue Tooth. But I’ve seen police on cell phones all the time. Hell, I’ve come to a red light and sent off a quick text to a friend about a traffic snafu they may encounter.

Auto Correct not only makes us look like idiots because it sometimes throws in an inappropriate word during a conversation with our parents, it also frees us from having to know how to spell most words.

If you think about how much of our daily lives are impacted by the use of smart phones, it should scare the poop out of you to think about them all going away due to a catastrophic event like a terrorist attack or EMP discharge.

I’m surprised shows like The Walking Dead haven’t made a reference to the fact that cell phones are no longer around. There’s only one child on the show and he’s not a teenager, but think about all of those surviving teens and young adults out there who can’t text their BFF, “OMG, my mom is totally a walker, FML :(“

Of course, I have digital voice for my landline so, if the Internet and cable providers go down, I won’t be able to call for help from my home phone, but at least I don’t have to rely on some whiz-bang-smarty pants phone to tell me what to do in an emergency. I can at least remember that instead of asking Siri what the number for 911 is.

Funny, makes me kind of miss that 100 foot mess of cord that I used to get tangled up in when I was a kid.

Gameboy By LG Thanks To Verizon Wireless

I never wanted a cell phone. Hell, I never wanted a credit card, either. Unfortunately, I had to have both.

The credit card came first so that I could eventually buy my house. No, I didn’t put my mortgage on the card, silly. I had to build up a credit existence, from what I was told, so that the state could put me under a microscope for a home loan.

The cell phone came a year later. My wife was worried that I’d end up in a ditch somewhere and need help. In my mind, if I had ended up in a ditch somewhere, having a phone wouldn’t help, unless that phone could call someone while I’m lying there, unconscious.

But, I caved and got a phone. It was a simple LG flip model that basically called people and had a camera. I spent more time taking photos than actually calling someone. That seems to be the case nowadays. Everyone buys a phone, not for the actual phone part, but for everything else. There’s texting and video and apps and music and games. I found it funny when Apple would release the new iPhones that could do all these whiz bang things, except actually make a call.

I admit I am a bit of a gadget geek and love tech stuff but sometimes making a product into something else actually negates the intended purpose. I’ve shied away from getting the latest iGear or whatever else is out there in favor of actually functional pieces of technology. I buy a camera or I buy a phone to do what the device is intended for, not because of all the extras. Besides, that costs more money and I am a self proclaimed cheap ass.

Still, when I got my last phone, an LG ENV2, I drank the Kool Aid a bit and took on a trial of VZ Navigator, which was nice. That was the one thing that was worth having on a phone. Having to buy pay hundreds of dollars for a GPS device was silly when you could pay $10 a month for the ability to do the same thing on your phone. I mean, you were going to have your phone in the car anyways, in case of a ditch scenario, right? So, I exhausted the trial month and said, “Eff, it! Ten bucks a month is too much for me to know where the hell I am going at all times. Let’s put St. Christopher in the driver’s seat.

The other indulgence I gave into was downloading games. Now, I was under the impression that my month long trial of VZ Navigator and web browsing included downloads. I didn’t realize I was purchasing a game that would be downloaded to my phone. In that month I downloaded Tetris and Monopoly. For the two years I owned that phone I played Tetris every day. When I’d sit in appointments I’d play. When I was stuck at the airport, waiting to board, I’d play. Loved that game. It was an addiction, back in college, when we had it for the NES. In fact, if I would have had Tecmo Super Bowl on my phone, I’d never get any work done.

But phones, like other technology, become obsolete and degrade over time. New plans, new two year contracts, and the chance to get a new phone, for free mind you, become options laid out before you.
Now, I was never a huge fan of the ENV2. The case became worn and the rubber case that I put on it made it difficult to type in the numbers because the edges of buttons were no longer raised. For someone, like me, with flippers and banana hands, I’d constantly miss dial a number or a password to my voicemail. Also, I would constantly butt dial people. There was a way to lock it but you had to go three screens deep into the phone menu to do it. Having the buttons on the inside was a plus, in my book. My pocket would constantly vibrate from me leaning on buttons, making noise. From then on, I kept my phone on vibrate and developed a case of vibration nervosa. That’s where you constantly check your phone because you think you felt it ring.

So, when it came time to change phones I chose the Cosmos. Why? It was free. Yeah, it had buttons on the outside and even though it had a complicated lock system, did I mention it was free?

Here’s the sucktitude that is my phone plan. I attempted to move everything from one phone to the other. Contacts, check. Messages, check. Pictures, check. Games….ch…um, nope! Turns out I would have to repurchase and download those games again. Granted, $10 is nothing huge in the scheme of things, but it’s the principle. Every two years or so, I would have to spend $20 to play games on my phone. I contacted Verizon Wireless customer service and they said, “Sorry, thems the brakes.” So, I say, The ENV2, yesterday’s phone, today’s Game Boy. I guess if I know ahead of time I’m going to be sitting around waiting for something like an oil change or a dentist appointment I’ll bring my ENV2 along to play games and use my Cosmos… to call people.