Monday, October 6, 2008

is this cheating?

so for the past oh, 4 months or so i have been dealing with a cell phone provider who shall remain nameless *cough* alltel *cough*.

last september i bought my blackberry because i didn't have any internet at home and thought that it would be good for me to have (and good thing too, after i was laid off it really came in handy!). well, after getting internet at home and work, i no longer needed it or its extremely expensive phone bill. i've been trying to switch over to a different, less expensive phone so that i can pay less than $100/month. since it's my primary phone, i need it to keep in touch with my friends and family scattered across the country so i still need a good plan and i love their circle plans.

well, to make a long story short. over the past months, i made about 4 trips to two different stores, talked on the phone to one extremely UNhelpful employee, and left pissed off and not to pleased. all i wanted to do was buy a new phone and switch my phone plan. how hard is it to do that? nope. i was told i have to pay a $200 termination fee, buy a new phone, and start a new contract. even with all of that i still would have saved a few hundred dollars over the year, i was willing to do it. BUT they told me i couldn't keep the same number. grrr. so of course, i didn't do it.

well, i called on friday and spoke with an extremely helpful employee, taryn, who told me, "no problem you can buy the phone you want and we'll cancel your blackberry contract. you just have to pay the full retail price of the phone." WWHHAATT??!? yup. that easy. so why wouldn't the other employees do it? i asked. she laughed and said, i don't know, seems like an easy fix to me. well, i decided to go to the store to do it so that i could have my phone on friday, not wednesday (to be shipped out to me, etc).

walked into the store and yup, no problem, the employee did everything i asked. no hassles. no termination fee. nada. i just started laughing in the store, i told the employee about the problems i've had over the past few months and he didn't understand why no one would do what i asked either.

so i bought a new phone because over the next year i'm saving over $475 even after buying the phone at retail. i figured i was not going to wait another month and pay the outrageous phone bill one more time until the end of the experiment. so, maybe this was cheating on my no spend month, but at the same time, i have been trying to get this resolved for MONTHS now and since i could get it done, i was going to as fast as possible.

yay to saving $475, i see this as a victory not as a cheat. :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!! I totally see this as a cheat!!!!! I feel its cheating because of the fact that its not a have to have kinda thing right now. I think you could've waited until this whole experiment was done with and then purchased the phone. Your whole goal was to see if you could survive off of $150 for the entire month. That means doing like others have to do in this world and suffer with what you have until the funds become available to you. The point was to find out how others survive off of $150 or less an entire month, not to whip out the credit cards. Alot of people like myself, do not have credit cards as a back up and can not afford to purchase new phones when they want. I feel its very good that you are so successful and making good money to be able to do those things but at the same time, this was an experiment and you cheated you cheater!!!!!!!!! Sorry hun, I totally feel you cheated because one who knows how it is to last off of $150 knows that if you don't have the $, you don't buy it. I have to wait and save up the money until I have enough to make that big purchase. You yourself have given me that advice before about a camera I wanted to buy!!! Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin Eater!!! I still love ya though, even if you did cheat!