Now I understand why people pay $500 for a phone; that’s the price for technological respect from any cellular carrier. If you go cheap, they don’t care a fig about you.
I’m not a total idiot when it comes to cell phones, but neither am I a genius. My cell phone is a no-contract device for which I pay for time and usage in advance and put up with a lack of bells and whistles for just an emergency and occasional usage product.
Figuring out how to adjust the darn thing, unfortunately, takes an advanced degree.
The darn thing didn’t ring, for starters. When you don’t get phone calls on a cell phone very often, the sound of an incoming call is like the call to dinner, and in this case my stomach was growling. Then my menu kept disappearing from the screen, and apparently it could only be resolved by turning the phone off, turning it on again, pressing the main button and praying hard. Sometimes the phone angels were too busy to help out. Try navigating a push button phone menu without the icons sometime.
Finally I tried to call Customer Care, and I soon found out that it means what it says: the customer–me–does care, but there isn’t anybody else on the other end of the line who does. There was no option to speak to a live person. I could press one for advice on phone upgrades (which I wouldn’t want to do until I could get my phone to just ring), or seven to return to the main menu. There was no option to press to scream at somebody.
By chance I finally found, at the end of the third long menu of options, that a representative was available. Giddy with excitement, I was connected to a fellow who said yes, he could help me. He sent me a text message and said he would call back in a few minutes after I got it. The text message advised me on how to check my account balance, not how to make the phone ring.
He called back and promised a solution shortly. That was the last I heard from him.
At one point while trying to test the phone, I hit upon an option to increase the volume, which I did out of simple frustration. It seemed to solve the problem, because in the middle of an executive meeting, my phone launched into the device’s default ringtone, labeling me forever as a phone dope with no clue as to how to make my ringtone “Call Me Maybe.”
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