First and foremost, I need to announce that Jess and I’s cell phone numbers have changed. We don’t know what the final numbers will be, but we have temporary numbers in the meantime. If you’d like to know why, read on. You can view the new numbers as long as you know one of our old numbers.
On Friday night, Jess and I went to our local AT&T Wireless store to get phones and sign up for service. The lady was very nice and seemingly helpful. She assured me over and over again that I would have no use for more than 4MB of data transfer a month when using the Nokia 3650. That data plan costs $7.99/mo. Sounded good to me, so we signed up with a 30-day money back guarantee.
After one day of usage, I was already at 1MB and I hadn’t even sent any pictures. So on Saturday I went to talk to the fine folks at T-Mobile. T-Mobile’s plan offerings minute-wise aren’t as nice as AT&T. But, they offer unlimited data for $9.99. AT&T also offers unlimited data, but the price is $79.99. There’s no way I’m paying that much. Unfortunately, the phones at T-Mobile were too expensive, so Jess and I decided to get them from Amazon where we’ll actually be PAID to buy the phones (after mail-in rebates, of course) and get a few good deals on accessories.
So, on Sunday, we went back to AT&T wireless to discontinue service. They weren’t very happy with this. Our saleslady was there, along with another man. The man told the lady that since I had a PDA type phone with a large screen, I needed more than 4MB/mo. According to him, since the screen is larger, it uses more MB of transfer. Uh huh. Sure. He tried to convince me that all I needed to do was step up to the 10MB plan for $14.99/mo. I told him that I didn’t want to pay that much for data services, so he told me that I should get a different phone then. I told him that I didn’t want a different phone and that I could get the same phone and the same calling plan (with a few less minutes) from T-Mobile for the same price. And, with T-Mobile I could get unlimited data for $9.99. The then told me that T-Mobile’s service sucked and that I would be unhappy with the call quality and service coverage. I informed him that AT&T wireless and T-Mobile have peering agreements and that, if for some reason T-Mobile’s network did suck, I would just use AT&Ts. He didn’t seem to understand what I meant by that.
Unfortunately, after all that talk and non-sense, they informed me that the system was down and that they were unable to accept a return from me. They told me that, nationwide, AT&T was doing a system upgrade and no one could do anything. They also told me that, if I do decide to cancel I would have to CALL customer service: my account cannot be canceled in the store. After canceling, I can bring the phones back in to them for a full refund. Additionally, the man informed me that it would be a good idea to keep my AT&T phone since I am going to be so disappointed with T-Mobile that I’m going to end up keeping it anyway.
Whatever. So we left the store with our phones still in hand. I don’t care. I’ll just play around with this one a bunch and learn all the tips and tricks on theirs. Then I can start fresh with a new phone when mine arrives.
So, that’s where we’re at.