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Wireless help -- with strings attached Ear to the Phone, Hand on the WalletBy Rick Horowitz
Alan is stupid -- he told me so himself. I'm so smart I nearly fell for it. I was talking to Alan because I couldn't talk to anyone else. (I think his name was Alan -- it could have been Albert. Or Mitch. I know it wasn't Jayson.) On my cell phone, that is -- I couldn't talk to anyone on my cell phone. (Actually, it's not a cell phone. It's a PCS phone -- "the clear alternative to cellular." And the very moment I hear somebody ask somebody, "What's your PCS number?", I'll start calling it that. But until then, it's a "cell phone," if only for the sake of...clarity.) Where were we? Right: I couldn't call anybody. My cell phone's display had frozen solid right in the middle of saving a new number. I had waited a minute, two minutes, ten minutes for the screen to clear, when the thought finally occurred to me: Huh? (I paraphrase.) I tried to turn the power off. I tried to turn the power on. No dice. I pushed every key on the keypad, and every combination of keys. Still nothing. You understand, of course, that when it comes to technology, I'm a hand-held device -- to do anything beyond the absolute basics, I need to have my hand held. So I turned to my old friend, the real phone, and called the cell-phone company's help line, where a mere 80 or 90 phone prompts later, I found Alan. He was polite. He was friendly. He was determined to get me back up and running. Determination is a wonderful thing. Knowledge would have been even better. Alan didn't have a clue. He'd call up my account. He'd check my settings. He'd put me on hold to ask somebody something. Then he'd come back with a progress report -- none -- and put me on hold again. I thanked him over and over for all the time he was spending trying to solve my little problem -- and I meant it. He apologized over and over for failing to straighten things out -- and he meant it. Or so I thought. When it was time to admit defeat, he was the very soul of modesty. He'd connect me to the experts over in Wireless Web -- not that my problem had anything to do with Wireless Web, he admitted, but they were experts. Then he said: "And because I was too stupid to help you, here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to give you two free months of Voice Command. I'll just put it right here in your file -- two free months." Since I didn't have the vaguest idea what Voice Command was, Alan took another minute to lay out a few details, some of the many ways Voice Command would improve my life. I wasn't sure I needed my life improved in precisely those ways, but hey -- it was free, wasn't it? I'd be turning one morning's inconvenience into 60 days of no-cost telephonic enhancement. Some deal! And after that? Somehow, despite my excitement, I managed to ask, "And after that?" "Five dollars a month," said Alan. We said our goodbyes, and I got ready for the wizards in Wireless Web. I had time to think while I waited for the call to go through. (I had time to write a novel while I waited for the call to go through.) I thought about what a great customer I'd already been, buying one of those calling plans with 5000 minutes a month, and then using roughly 11 of them and flushing the rest right down the toilet. I'd never gotten around to changing to a smaller, less expensive plan; was I really going to remember to drop this latest little gift when free-sample time was over? Amazing: Just as sweet as pie, Alan had managed to move me from "So sorry I can't help you" to "Here's something else you don't need, won't stop, and will keep paying for forever." "Take out your battery," the Wireless wizard was advising me. I took out my battery. "Now put it back in." I put it back in. "Is it working again?" It was working again -- miracle of miracles. I thanked her from the bottom of my phone book. "Oh, and one more favor?" I wondered. "Could you cancel those two free months of Voice Command?" I can be stupid, too. Posted 6/24/03. Be
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Rick Horowitz
