Yo! My blog has moved!

You will be automatically redirected in 6 seconds. If not, visit
http://davielife.wordpress.com
and update your bookmarks.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

AT&T formerly Cingular formerly Suncom formerly a happy Davie




I have been through 3 cell phone carriers, and each "upgrade" has done one thing.

Cost me.

It all started with Suncom.

For $30 a month I could call as much as I wanted. I.loved.it. I rarely left the area and even when I did the roaming minutes were more than enough.

Enter Cingular.

Cingular brought with it Rollover and a price jump to $89.00 for enough minutes to cover what I had been using. Most months I was banking time, but it was worth it since I got a new phone and second line for 10 bucks.

Enter AT$T.

By this time my cell phone usage was way down, so to save some money I opted for a 450 minute plan back down to $40.00. I had 2000 Rollover minutes from Cingular and figured it would be enough.

You know what? Rollover minutes expire! Would have been a good idea to keep track of that little detail.

About 2 months ago I noticed a paperless option for billing. Being the progressive young man that I am, I checked it.

I discovered something about myself; If I don't see it, it doesn't exist.

In the mail yesterday was this notice of cancellation from AT$T and the amount was almost $300.00! Apparently the "paperless" bill made it to the spam folder on my computer and I forgot to pay Octobers bill.

Octobers bill was $130 and Novembers was $160!

I called them right away and waited on hold for 5 minutes. I asked where I stood this billing cycle and I was already over 250 minutes. And by the way, since I was calling the 800 number, it was on the rise. The end of the current billing cycle is the 12th - so I was screwed.

I can hardly wait to see the final bill.

I just wanted to cry.

Faced with the prospect of people trying to reach me for my freelance business and not being able to actually talk to them, I switched to Sprint. It is now critical that I make as much extra money as I can because with home schooling, this God forsaken "war on terror" and its impact on energy prices, 20% inflation, slowing economy, weakening dollar, our budget is beyond tight.

Enter Sprint PCS.

The plan I chose included 500 outbound and unlimited inbound and unlimited calls to home for $65 with a 2 year contract. I also got the Samsung SPH-m620 UpStage phone for "free" and a $50.00 rebate.

Granted this is all my fault as I should have paid more attention to my usage. The problem is I never had to before, and the thought never entered my mind.

Stop the world, I want to get off.

No comments: