It all started when some guys at work told Steve that he’s eligible for a discount through his employer.  He kept telling me to do that… ha.  I kept saying “YOU need to find out how,” and he finally did.  Just take a paycheck stub into one of the stores, he was told.  So last Sunday we went in there together but it was just as I predicted…

The account we had was the same one Steve first got in early 1999.  Somewhere along the line, I believe when we added my phone, so around 10 years ago, someone with AT&T screwed up and the account changed over to have my name on it, Steve’s nowhere to be found.  It was never a problem though, so I never said anything about it.  But, of course, because it was his paycheck stub and his discount and my account… no dice.  So the guy in there is telling us we can change the name on the account… for $18 a line.  Let’s see, $18 a line times 5 lines… oh, yeah, $90.  Not happening.

That’s just stupid.  $18 to change the name on an account, PER LINE?  Not even just a per account fee, but one per line!  I don’t usually act this way but I got kinda loud, I stated that I was NOT paying $90 to change a name on the account, it’s asinine.  Everyone was looking at me, heh.  We ended up leaving, the guy wrote his number on a card and told us to call if we got the account changed over.

The next day we called with the plan to ask them to please waive the fee – after all, look back in your records, it’s your fault the name’s not correct anyway.  Steve takes the phone after I’ve authorized him to speak (see: asinine) and then the woman tells him oh, yeah it is $18 a line but if you do it on the internet, it’s free.  Say, what??  Couldn’t have told us that in the first place?  (But again we’re back to why is it free online but not free in the store or on the phone??)

I started the process right away and was told that we were waiting on a credit check for Steve, check back later.  So I did.  Same thing.  Again on Tuesday.  Again on Wednesday.  Finally, on Thursday, when we were both present, I called in.  Something wasn’t happening like it was supposed to online, so back to the phone we go.  The guy we got on the phone said that he’d waive the $18 per line because we at least tried to do it online.  (He was really nice about it so rather than saying it, I only thought “heck yeah, you will.”)   It took for.ev.er.

Finally we were finished with all five lines and he’s telling me how we’re going to get two bills this month, both pro-rated, and that all our plans and features have transferred over.  This was also good because online it was going to raise my internet costs by another $10 a month, though I don’t know why.  I figured I’d complete it then go into the account later and put it back, or call them… again.

Also stupid: I lost the insurance on my phone by doing this.  You can only add insurance within like the first 45 days of getting a phone and apparently you can’t transfer it, so I didn’t get to take it with me and I don’t get to re-add it.

Half stupid: all lines now have an 11 month contract on them.  Steve is not going to like this one when I finally get around to telling him.  On three lines, having an 11 months on them actually shortens the contract but on the other 2, Steve’s and his dad’s, they now have a contract where they didn’t have one before.  Steve’s has been out of contract for years upon years now and his Dad’s a few years as well.  Neither of them want theirs under contract, they want to be able to cancel at any time if they want.  The real sad part about this is they’re forced back into contract without the benefit of getting a new phone.  As for mine, it takes 2 months off my contract and I think it takes a year off of Sarah’s, maybe about 9 months off my mother-in-law’s phone.  So I’ll be able to get a new piece of crap in October rather than December now.

Not finished yet, though, of course not.  Early this morning, I got an email from AT&T stating that Sarah’s line was about to go over her text message limit… um… what??  We’re supposed to have unlimited family messaging and even if we didn’t have unlimited, we only had this new account for 2 days.  Over limit!?  After a lot of trouble getting the online account going again I was able to get in and see that we were going to have all these overages of 20 cents a message and 50 cents for a multimedia message.  Of course, I flipped out, but I couldn’t call, it was about 5 am.  Instead I added family messaging and went back to sleep for a while like usual.

Getting home later I called up AT&T and asked them to back date the family messaging plan.  Unfortunately I apparently screwed that up because supposedly they can only back date it when it’s first added, however, the woman I talked to said she will put a note to refund the overages.

Just… really?  Unfortunately, this IS worth my time, Steve’s supposed to get a 19% discount.  When you’re spending $200 a month on cell phones… that’s a lot.  However, we don’t have the discount yet!  Of course.  I called the number the guy wrote on the card for me, turns out it’s his personal cell phone and he’s not working today.  What an idiot.  So he says to go in at any time and tell someone else that HE said it’s ok and started, just to send it through, or wait until he works on Monday.  It’s gonna have to be tomorrow, on Sunday, because… duh duh duhhhhnnn… now my name’s not on the account OR the check stub so is someone else going to work with ME on this?  Doubtful.  This is just ridiculous.  I don’t see why both our names can’t be on this account, but whatever.  Oh, I also failed to mention that this guy told us the discount could take months to start applying… what the heck!?  I swear, if it wasn’t such a good discount…

Sheesh, I can’t wait for this to be over.

The thing is, though, it’s all a big racket, these cell phones. For instance, if you buy a ringtone, you can’t move it to your new phone. So I’m losing several of those. Sure, I can make the ringtones now that I have my bluetooth, but that takes time to get it right.

Oh well, I had to have a new phone. The last one is cracking more every time you open or close it. Soon the top part will no longer be connected to the rest of the phone. E is happy though, he thinks he owns a working phone now. He got mad when I took the battery out though, so I put it back in (but not the old sim card). But once that battery goes dead…

Yeah okay, I can’t remember what else I wanted to say… Guess I’ll try to sleep now…

The other day, I was talking to the mobile kiosk lady at Sam’s – just chit-chatting, really – and the topic of text messages and text plans came up. She told me about a new plan/feature that you can get, but you have to call them to get it.

Simply put, you add $5 to your current text messaging plan and you can get unlimited mobile-to-mobile texts. Since I currently had the 400 for $10 plan, I called today and told them to change my plan to the 200 for the $5 plan and add the $5 for unlimited mobile-to-mobile. Make sense?

Most of the people I text are Cingular customers, anyway. Just a handful isn’t and I think the 200 on that end should do me fine until we switch to T-Mobile this summer…

So check it out if you already do the text thing…

I know I have big thumbs, but that’s no excuse for you to delete my important text message I’m writing without asking for confirmation first!

Why, oh, why must you do this to me!?

:-(

This time, I would like to concentrate on their website. IT SUCKS! And here are the reasons why:

1. The UI (user interface) and navigation are really confusing.
As you can see, by viewing this website, I am no stranger to the web, however, I find their website to be the most confusing piece of crap there has ever been. I always end up going in circles looking for what I need. Instead of all roads leading to Rome, all links lead to the main page.

2. The design is just… bad.
Not so much from a standpoint of whether or not I like the design, but that it’s not necessarily compatible with all machines. For instance, here’s what it looks like on my laptop:

What is with that? Shouldn’t the design be fluid? Now granted, that’s a 1288px width, but they should at least center it if they’re going to make it fixed for 800×600. Even in 1024×768 it looks like crap.

Also, there are many bugs in the design such as the drop down menus going behind whatever graphic happens to be right below them so that you can’t get to the bottom menu items, things not fitting in the defined space and overflowing in strange patterns, common occurrances of errors (something about a directive not found), and many links opening in new windows for no reason whatsoever, etc.

3. I am routinely logged out.
The very first thing I do is log into the site. Then I may browse a few pages looking for what I need and before long, it’s logged me out, and I have to start all over again. This has made it extremely hard to ever email support. I’ll log in and get to the support page and then it wants me to log in again, doing that returns me to the main page. Go back, and try to email support, and have to go through the whole thing all over again.

4. Adding anything to my plan is near impossible.
I had to add Steve a text messaging plan for his phone. (First of all, it’s completely stupid that I have to do this per phoneline and not the whole package like the minutes are.) So I finally find what I need and start filling out the form. They want to know what package I want, my first name, my last name, what phone number it should be applied to, last four digits of my social security number, my zip code, and email address. That’s all basic, easy information – for me, right? It keeps some idiot who hacked my account from adding stuff to my plan. Great. Only the stupid thing kept telling me that the first name does not match that on the account. Um, hello!? I know my first name. It was the first thing I learned to write. I know how to spell my first name. After several tries, I figured it out. It went through when I put in my first name, a space, and my middle initial. Sheesh.

Finally, though it’s not website-related, so much, here’s another Cingular rant. Apparently if you are shopping for ringtones on your phone and you preview it, you are automatically charged for the whole thing. Sheila has been doing shopping on her phone the whole time she’s had it. And while she knew she was going to get charged for the internet usage, she didn’t know it was going to charge her for previewing it either because this is a new thing or because they didn’t charge her for that the first several months. From May, I told her she’d had six ringtones on her number and she freaked saying she hadn’t downloaded any. When I called, they told me you get charged for previewing and that there were nine coming up on the next bill. You figure the cost, that’s $2.49 each plus any internet usage. They were supposed to credit us half of the nine, but so far I have yet to see that. I think that is completely rediculous, because, in her words, she previewed to find out she didn’t like the tone. Why should we be billed for that?

Again, if Cingular wasn’t the only company that could guarantee us service in our area…