August 18, 2004

• Curse you, Cellular One!

  
  

  There should be a special place in corporate hell for cell phone companies in general, and Cellular One in particular.  I know, there are worse businesses–crack dealers, white slavers, Wal-Mart, the pharmaceutical companies and the Republican Party spring to mind.  But few companies are hated more and with more reason.  And this isn’t just my own opinion–a recent national survey said that cell phone comnpanies are right up there with used car dealers in being the most hated businesses in the contry.  Now think about it.

  
  

  Used car dealers have been with us almost as long as there have been cars–say 100 years or so.  This is a lot of time to earn a rotten reputation, and develope the special skills of lying, cheating, and outright fraud that distinguish the used-car business.  Cell phone outfits have only been around a relatively short time, but they have used that time well, developing their hellish reputations.  And with cause.  Here is my cell  phone horror story.

  
  

  Last summer, I finally got a cell phone so I wouldn’t have to scurry around to find a pay phone every time I wanted to call my sweety.  The closest one to my cabin was at a Tesoro station on the highway, and our conversations would cease every time a train , or some nitwit on a four-wheeler, or some pill-headed trucker or some blamed biker went by–and many bikers equate loud pipes with safety, never mind that the noise makes many of us want to cap their asses.  But I digress.

  
  

  Overcoming my (well-founded) technophobia, I talked to the nice lady at the AT&A kiosk at Wal-mart.  The phone I wnated (a free Nokia) had been unavailable all summer (or so she said).  So I settled for a $49 Motorola, which was acceptable.  The thing only had three games, a calculator, a voice recorder, and (I think) a time machine built into it–relatively no-frills, in other words.  What the hell I need with a phone I can play poker with, or use to figure out my taxes with is totally beyond me–go figure.  Anyway, I bought the thing and slowly got used to the hassle and stress of the “convenience.”  After the season, when I went home fifty miles up the valley, I discovered to my horror and chagrin that the damned thing was useless except as a paperweight where I live.  No calls, in or out.  We live in a cell phone black hole.

  
  

  This summer when I moved back into town to work, I figured the thing would at least be useful then.  However, AT&T was swallowed up by Cellular One.  The first they did was raise the rates.  The second thing they did, evidently, was sell half of their equipment and lay off the engineers–service which had been marginal to begin with got way worse.

  
  

  And it wasn’t just me.  Formerly happy ATT&T subscribers all over the state flooded the state complaint office with comnplaints.  The state officials, who had evidently been well-paid for their non-feasance, declined to  prosecute or even investigate.  I mean, shit, God forbid a state regulatory commission should actually regulate.  So we suffered in relative silence.  Except for the static on the line.

  
  

  It got to where I couldn’t even call my own number (to check my voice mail) without getting “call failed.”  Fate intervened in the form of a bogus charge for a 100-minute call to the local public library.  I got through to the customer service people and convinced them that I had not, in fact, talked for over an hour and a half to some librarian–they cancelled the charge but assumed it was my fault, that I had forgotten to turn off the phone.  Not bloody likely, I say, but not toally impossible.  Anyway, while I was doing this, Kathy was calling them on a landline.  We both complained about the poor reception.  She was told that if I called customer service from my phone, at my location, the engineers could do some hocus-pocus to improve the reception.  I didn’t call, never believed it for a second, but Kathy kept after me and kept after me, so I finally got up at five in the damn morning (when the wait was shorter and night rates were in effect).  I had to get up anyway to call in a knife order to an east coast wholesaler.

  
  

  The reception was perfect, wouldn’t you know it.  Anyway, I told the rep all about what Kathy had been told, she transferred me to an engineering rep, who had never heard of the hocus-pocus thing.  All she needed, she said, was my phone number and my physical location,and all she could do was submit a “trouble ticket” to the engineers. Any authorized person could have called from any phone in the world and it would not have made a difference.  Kathy had been lied to!  A big fat smelly juicy lie, no less.  I gloated big time, since times when I am proved right are few indeed, and I tend to make the most of them.

  
  

  Anyway, the other day I got a message.  After three tries, I got through.  “Hi, this is Megan, . . .crackle, crackle. . . from ‘ellular One. . .crackle, crackle. . .the engineers. . .crackle crackle. . . and this should improve your reception. .crackle hiss pop. . . if you don’t crackle hiss pop. . .” The line was cut off at that point.

  • 2:27 pm
  • 7 Comments