cell phones

Just got off the phone with Cingular to discuss the spontaneous and unannounced suspension of my voicemail service. Stupid Cingular. Like their fellow evil empire corporation Comcast, they have a near monopoly over an unpredictable service that is constantly changing, which equals crappy service that we have to put up with because no one would dare give up their cable or cell phones. But it's not so much the service problems that bother me (because like the rest of my family I get a perverse joy from engaging in conflict with service personnel). When you call Comcast, once you get a real person on the phone it's sort of understood that they're trying to swindle you, and if you were smart enough to figure out that monthly $13 remote control fee wasn't legit and had the patience to sit on hold and be transferred for an hour, they'll just give you what you want right away. But with Cingular, they always accuse the customer first. The answer to every voicemail question I've had, even in the online help section, involves some variation on [and i'm paraphrasing] "you probably didn't set it up right, jackass". For my most recent problem, turns out they figured that since I hadn't mentioned wanting the voicemail service in awhile that I probably didn't want it, so they cancelled it. And they cancelled my text messages along with it. The guy was kind enough to mention though that they had also cancelled my brother text message service rather than increasing it to unlimited as he requested (a package which apparently doesn't exist, despite what the last representative told us).
My favorite Cingular encounter was when I called earlier this year about the problem a few specific callers were having with getting busy signals every time they called my phone. The woman's explanation? There's a lot of traffic and highways in Virginia so you can't get good service. "But this problem only occurs at night and on weekends." "Well maybe there was an accident." "An accident coincidentally every time someone called me?" "Um...you probably just need a new phone." That's always the final solution. Sign your soul over to us for another 2 years and drop $150 on a new phone. Sure your phone may seem fine, but why would you expect to pay $100+ for something and have it work for more than a year??

Of course I could always switch to Verizon, but then what would I have to complain about?