Flipping on a New Phone

Alexander Graham Bell. The man who started this mess.

My wife did a little shopping around, and found a flip phone for $20 at Walmart, that supports AT&T. She then took that phone to our local AT&T mobile phone service store and paid them $10 to add 40 minutes of call time. Now all she has to do is keep buying at least 40 minutes a month from AT&T, at 25 cents a minute, to keep her minutes and service. All her unused minutes will roll over, each month.

Who knows, there could be better deals out there, but this seems good enough for our purpose, which is just to have a cell phone for emergency needs.

Thanks for all the great suggestions you guys gave us Friday. If we didn’t follow your particular suggestion, it at least helped point us in a general direction that was useful, because most of the suggestions involved doing something similar to what my wife finally did.

As a side-note, and to give credit where it’s due, my wife took the $20 Tracfone card that didn’t work for us, back to Walmart. She asked for a refund. They refused. They said they don’t give refunds for that card. My wife insisted and spoke with a manager.

She said, “If I stole $20 from this store, you’d have me arrested, wouldn’t you?”

Manager: “Yep.”

Wife: “Well you guys just stole $20 from me, by selling me this useless card. Isn’t stealing from customers illegal?”

The manager finally relented. He took a 20-dollar-bill from petty cash and gave it to her, in return for the card.

Thanks Walmart, for seeing the light and finally coming through.

What the Flip is Wrong With the Phone Companies?

All my wife wants to do is call someone in case of an emergency. So I got her a Tracfone. Tracfone allows you to pre-pay with a phone card that you have to buy for about $20, every three months. But the past few years I’ve found it harder and harder to get the damned pre-paid cards to work.

Last week I gave up on Tracfone. My wife bought a new pre-paid card, and no matter what I did, it wouldn’t upload air time on her phone. So we’re out $20.

Then my wife got all excited about Jitterbug. For $15.00 a month she could have a flip phone that would be easy to use, and never require those damned pre-paid cards. The Jitterbug company advertises a lot and has a good reputation. Seemed like a good deal for us, even if it was a little more expensive than a Tracfone.

So she bought a flip phone. Then she left me with the job of activating it. That’s because I’m the supposed technology brain in this household. My wife is lost when it comes to electronic devices. She hates smart phones. She can’t figure out how to work them. She just wants a simple goddamned phone for making what?

You guessed it.

Phone calls.

But I couldn’t activate her new fuckin’ phone. I tried to activate it online, and everything seemed to be going peachy. Until the very last screen. It popped up a message that said there was a problem, and that I had to call their customer service line, which is available 24/7.

President William Howard Taft, trying to get his phone activated.

It was 6:30 PM. I called them. But all I got was a recording that said they were only available for calls from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM. What? Don’t they know what the hell “24/7” means? Maybe they think it’s a math equation, with the end result being the amount of hours they’re available for calls.

Alright, so the next morning I called them again. I got a recording that said, “Due to our overwhelming call volume, you may experience a long fucking wait.” Or words to that effect. And then they gave me another message: “However, if you want to experience faster customer service, please call back between the hours of 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM.” WTF?!! I had just tried to call them the night before at 6:30 PM, and got a recording to call back later.

That’s when I came to the conclusion that Jitterbug is a real fly-by-night operation. Or rather, an operation that claims to fly by night, but really only flies between 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM.

Anyway, I waited nine minutes on hold, listening to jitterbug style old-fogie music, until a customer service rep answered. She then put me on hold to try to straighten the problem out and activate our new phone. I was on hold for 45 minutes. Then a new customer service rep got on the line and said some mysterious things about technical support working on the problem. And then she hung up on me.

That was it for me. I found a new phone number to call, to cancel our account and get a refund. After about 25 minutes on hold, while seething with suppressed rage, I finally was able to negotiate that transaction.

But now my wife has no phone. All she wants is a flippin’ flip phone. Not a stupid-assed smart phone, but a flip phone, godammit. She just wants to be able to make phone calls. Nor do we want to pay all those exorbitant smart phone data rates.

Does anybody know of any phone companies out there with reasonable rates, that offer flip phones, along with good customer service? Our needs are simple. But our choices are complex. And it seems difficult to negotiate the mine fields of all the fly-by-night phone companies out there, where the wheat seems to be buried by the chaff.

We would appreciate any suggestions.

An Amazingly Accurate Amazon Review of a Product I Paid For

I love living in the desert. But my sinuses don’t. This desert makes my sinuses as desiccated as a lunch of sardine sandwiches. Or a bowl of corn flakes without milk. Or a sprinkle of salt on the underside of a snail.

But not quite as dry as my jokes.

I thought I’d do something about it, so I went on Amazon and found the Seneo 3.0L Ultrasonic Cool Mist Humidifier with Sensor Control, Auto Swing for Whole Home and Office. (What a mouthful.) It has a 4.5 star rating, so I bought it.

The Seneo 3.0L Ultrasonic Cool Mist Humidifier with Sensor Control, Auto Swing for Whole Home and Office, which I paid for with money.

I read customer reviews on it, before the purchase, but after I received this product I discovered that some of the reviews weren’t as accurate and informative as I hoped they would be. Some of these reviewers admitted that they were given a free product in exchange for their review. Huh? Isn’t that bribery? Well I guess that should have been my tip-off. I’ve since discovered that many companies offer free or discounted products in exchange for submitting an Amazon review.

This is apparently a growing trend, and I suspect that this reduces the quality and reliability of product reviews. I’ve been a loyal Amazon customer for many years, partly because of their customer review feature. But after this experience I’ll be more circumspect about any products I purchase through Amazon.com.

Anyway, I wrote my own review of Seneo’s humidifier, which I posted on Amazon as follows:

I Have Not Received a Free Product for this Review

This big white beast will pour out a Sacramento tule fog at it’s strong setting (Level 3), and a gentle spring mist at it’s weak setting (Level 1).

The online product description says it will support 12 hrs continuous use at the strong level, and 33 hrs at the weak level. But I can only get 7.5 hrs at the strong level, and 21 hrs at the weak level. At Level 2, I get about 13 hrs.

It makes a low whirring noise, which I find slightly annoying. But what irritates me most is a loud knocking sound it occasionally emits. I think this occurs when it draws water from the removable tank. This noise happens about every 20 minutes, and startles me from a light sleep, even when I’m wearing earplugs.

It displays a readout of relative humidity which seems inaccurate, because it is always at least 15% higher than the readout from another humidity gauge in my bedroom, even when I initially switch the machine on. This leaves me wondering if the manufacturer is trying to fool me into believing the machine is doing a better job than it actually is doing.

The humidity level is displayed in large, very bright white LED letters, along with the temperature reading (in Celsius) of the water inside. This display cannot be turned off, and it’s so bright I had to construct a cardboard shield to block the light, so that I can sleep with this unit turned on.

This unit will not raise the relative humidity level in my bedroom, unless I keep the door and the windows closed. Otherwise, in order for me to feel like I’m benefiting from it, I must be no further than two or three feet away from the humidifier.

I can only pour 2.75 liters into the water tank, in spite of the claim that it has a 3.0 liter tank.

The instruction manual is skimpy, in my view, and written in comical pidgin English. I had to figure out some of the features on my own.

I have not received a free or discounted product in exchange for this review. Therefore, you need not suspect the accuracy and detail of information I have provided.