!!!!!!!!!!<---warning:rant; may include over use of exclaimation marks

OK, I don’t usually use livejournal as a place to vent my frustrations, but I just have to say that dealing with the cell phone companies makes me feel the way that Lewis Black feels all the time, and I don’t like it!

I recently bought a cell phone. I just wanted something to keep in the car for emergencies and so that people can get in touch with me when I’m not home. It would be nice if I could get it to play the chocobo theme too, but that was negotiable. Since I didn’t plan on using it much; certainly far less then 300 minutes a month, it seemed pointless to spend $30 a month on the cheapest plan I could find, so I decided to get a pre-paid phone. But when I made a call yesterday, after having it for a few days and making only a few short calls, most of my minutes had disappeared. I called the company, thinking that perhaps I’d forgotten to hang up after a call, and had lost several hours that way, but it turns out that even with a pre-paid phone, there’s a $.99 a day charge, regardless of whether you use the phone that day or not. So…isn’t that about $30 a month, PLUS the actual time you use the phone? GGGAAHHH!!!! That’s still a monthly plan then!!!! IT’S NOT PRE PAID IF YOUR STILL PAYING A MONTHLY FEE!!!!!!!!!!! GOD!! JESUS!! And it won’t even play the chocobo theme!!!!!!!!!!

Well, dealing with their brand of bullshit makes me angry, but you can’t get angry at the customer service people; you’re not allowed to! I don’t mean they’d get mad back, or hang up. Just the opposite. Clearly, the good people at verizon customer service must have to deal with pissed off cell phone users from morning to night, and the crucible of their rage has forged a customers service protocol that is so ridiculously over polite that there is nothing that a mere irate consumer can do against it. I know this, because I employ the same strategy at work, when I have to deal with an angry customer. But on the phone with verizon, I was but a student among masters. When they translated Rurouni Kenshin into English, they should have just based Kenshins speech patterns off of those of the average phone company sales representative.

So, I politely asked what the difference actually was between the thirty dollar a month plan and the thirty dollar minimum pre-paid plan was, and they told me, with unimpeachable civility, that the thirty dollar a month plan, with hidden fees, would probably come to more like $40 a month. I think I may have actually briefly lapsed into the speech patterns of an 1800’s aristocrat (Well, I’m afraid I find these calling plans frightfully convoluted, and what’s more, fraudulent! And so, I say good day to you sir.) Like something out of Dickens, it where. Then I courteously told the person that, while not mad at them personally, I would appreciate it if they would kindly pass on to their superiors what I thought of them. He said he couldn’t, but didn’t seem to mind my saying it. Damn those cell phone company hire ups; their very whims spinning the raw firmament into deceitful calling plans, cosseted on all sides by legions of sales representatives brandishing armaments of pure, luminous etiquette!!!