Cellular Automaton
Why must wireless carriers be evil?
Up until the iPhone, I’ve had an account with US Cellular for 10+ years (ever since high school). Back in May or June or something like that, Melody and I wandered into a US Cellular store and I remember inquiring about how much time we each had left on our contracts. I have a pretty solid memory of the world “July” being uttered and I remember thinking “cool - just in time for the iPhone I’ll never be able to afford!”
July comes around and work graciously and unexpectedly buys me an iPhone. Naturally I immediately signed up for the annoying 2 year AT&T contract and somewhat grudgingly ported my number from US Cellular - of which I had been a happy customer forever.
A few days after the port Melody and I stopped in at the US Cellular store and asked to make sure that my account had been canceled. (She’s still got her number there - we were on a share-talk and I didn’t want her number getting messed up somehow.) The dude said everything was fine and sent us on our way. Imagine my surprise when the bill showed up yesterday with a $150.00 termination fee…
This morning I drove to the store and talked to the manager and asked if there was anything I could do about this and that I had been a loyal customer for somewhere around a decade and imagined they could waive this fee this one time. He shook his head and used an “I’m so sorry” voice to inform me that, no, his hands were tied. Bummer for you, etc. It turns out that my contract was set to expire in October but that US Cellular lets you re-contract with no penalty (how kind of them) 4-ish months before the end. I suspect that what happened is the dude we talked to back in May or June or whatever just assumed we wanted to see when we could freely change our plan with them and gave that answer rather than the answer I really was looking for.
I was kind of pissed when I left and wasn’t going to give up without a bit more fight. This bill is $150.00 that we didn’t have budgeted - plus you’d think and hope, as a human, that years and years of being a customer would count for something. It still depresses me when I am reminded that it counts for jack shit. What’s weird is that I don’t know that things like that have ever mattered during my entire lifetime. Perhaps I’m corrupted by the stories from my parents and grandparents of the way things used to be? Or maybe the idea of being respected or honored for years of service (in a manner of speaking) is an innate human emotion that the corporate world is desperately attempting to kill off?
When I got home, I called up the US Cellular customer relations department and explained my woes in the hopes that perhaps they’d do something that the store manager wouldn’t. I explained that I was beginning to think it was somewhat of a miscommunication and also that it pained me that I could be a customer for so many years and have that not count for anything. As expected, my history made no difference whatsoever. The meaning of “loyalty” is different when you’re talking to a wireless provider - they think only in terms of contract length and even then they don’t see it as loyalty - they see it as your duty to pay them the alloted amount of time. Any previous contracts you had with them are irrelevant.
The lady I talked to was very nice and I mentioned that I understood that, technically, I guess I have to pay the $150.00 and all that, etc. She put me on hold for awhile to “run some numbers.” I figured she’d arrive at somewhat the same conclusion as me - it would have been cheaper to pay for the next two months of service than pay the $150.00 termination fee and that perhaps the fine could be reduced accordingly.
When she came back, that’s exactly what she said - but then she indicated (but didn’t out-right say) that they have an internal policy for dealing with disputes exactly like this and they will either take 50% of the original termination fee or payment for the rest of the service - whichever is cheaper for the customer. So in the end she knocked $75.00 off of my bill. I’d still have preferred to not pay it at all, of course, but I can’t say I’m not faultless here, either, so I guess this was a fair resolution. It still means that this month’s US Cellular bill is uncomfortably high, but at least it’s not unbearably so now.
In summary: If you have a billing dispute with US Cellular, call it in - the store people are useless (even the managers).
Moral of the story: Never sign a contract with a wireless provider - their brand of enforced customer loyalty is just another way of saying “indentured servant.”
(BTW I am unreasonably proud of the title of this post… just thought you should know.)
August 11th, 2007 at 6:40 am
Hmmm…I think the moral of the story is to keep those cell phone contracts handy to make sure they’re not breaking the rules. I just checked my US Cellular contract and it said on the front page that there will be a $150 early termination fee. They didn’t sneak it off and put in in small print. They put it right on the front page in somewhat large print that if I cancel before the two years are up, they’ll charge me $150.
September 13th, 2007 at 9:22 am
I know exactly what you’re complaining about…. I was a loyal Verizon Wireless customer in St. Louis, MO from day 1. (I used to be with Ameritech for a couple years until Verizon bought them out, so they inherited me as an instant new customer.)
A couple years ago, I started working at a new job that required me to spend a LOT of time on my cellphone while driving around to customer sites. I got a couple huge phone bills for going over on my minutes, before I called Verizon to see about buying a bigger plan. Frustratingly, they told me I couldn’t even buy a plan with more than 1200 minutes a month or so on it (may have been 1100 or 1300 actually — I forget now, but something in that neighborhood).
I was really hoping for something like 1500-1600 minutes, because any less, and I could still potentially go over.
I pointed out to them that other carriers like Sprint offered plans where if you exceeded your monthly allotment, you’d just automatically be billed some nominal fee and have another few hundred minutes added that month - and asked if they didn’t have *anything* remotely similar I could purchase.
I was told, flat out, no. I pointed out how long I’d been a faithful customer (with no late payments, ever!), and the rep. did look me up and said “Wow! You HAVE been with us a LONG time.” — but they still had nothing to offer me. (Actually, after a little more complaining, they made some “concession” of adding a free extra 100 minutes a month to my plan, which wouldn’t have solved my problem.)
I ended up having to break my contract (a family plan with 2 phones, so I got billed over $325 in termination fees) - but even THAT was better than a couple more months of bills for “overages”!
It’s just like car insurance. Loyalty doesn’t pay. In fact, what pays is constant research and hopping around whenever it’s to your financial advantage to do so. Seems really backwards, but I guess that’s what happens when companies focus on the “short term” instead of the “long run”.