Ultimate Rant o' Cell Phone Customers (Part I)

These are some of my pet-peeves when it comes to people and cell phones. As the original just kept growing with rage, I decided to break it into several installments.

Overage
Personally, I have had four different cell phone companies over the course of the past ten years or so. I'd imagine most people have either also had several different companies or a phone for quite some time. Yet, some things that are common with every other company in the industry seem to jump out and surprise people before peeing on their couch and stealing the beer in the fridge. Unless you have an unlimited minute plan, you know you have a set amount of minutes you can use in a given period, roughly thirty days. If you exceed these minutes, you are charged extra. While the price you pay per minute may vary, the basic concept has been around since the advent of cell phones. The same concept has since been expanded to text message and internet usage. Bottom-line, if you’re not paying for unlimited, you take that risk. Plan accordingly.

Taxes
Rarely do I see people complain that their McDouble was not an even dollar as most people seem to understand that you pay taxes on most things you buy at a store. Unfortunately, these same people don’t seem to apply the same logic to services like cell phone service. If you are upset that your bill is not a nice, round $49.99, you are an idiot and you need to complain to your congressman or other elected official as your beef is with the gummint, not the company that is forced to collect these taxes. The same thing applies to regulatory fees like those to provide emergency services with your location if you have an emergency. You may not use these on a daily basis, but you’re going to be paying for them regardless and you’d probably be pissed if you died in a frozen tundra or were mauled by mutated cannibals in West Virginia because no one found you.

Changing Companies
Certainly you remember when you messed up, your previous company refused to remove accurate charges from your bill, so you decided to stick it to them and go somewhere else. If this seems fuzzy, certainly you can see that your phone is now different and your bill has another company’s name at the top? All of this means what you paid for, what your plan was, or what that last company did is no longer relevant. Your last company may have given you free phones every third day because you were so awesome, but we don’t. You may have been able to go four months without paying a bill before, but now you can’t. Your plan may have included free incoming calls, unlimited text messages included, and complimentary psychiatric service, but you opted to leave that company. I’m not sure why you would, but don’t assume that your current service is just like your last one. As we illustrated before, it’s not.