RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Saturday, October 10

October O.C.D. #3: Cell Phone Contract Battling

Here was my situation... I had two cellphones in my family with the cheapest deal for that company that was like $90 a month, and being a self-employed American asshole, a separate line for that was a good idea, especially since my landline was usually tied up by internet from me, my wife, or oldest kid. That was $22 a month, for shitty dial-up aka internet welfare, and my cell didn’t work at home, at least not when it was Alltel. Then Verizon bought it and it worked sitting in one window of my house. Seriously, that was it. Well, I decided that I was gonna be a Freelance Writer because I like to decide ridiculous things, and in order for this to be successful, I would have to move beyond my internet welfare aka dial-up, and the only alternative where I kick it and rest my head is satellite internets, which, on the cheap deal, is still like $80 a month. So I figured if I could drop my cell phones and get some pre-paid burners instead, and renew them since I ain’t nobody on The Wire, the drop in that would make a switch from the internet welfare aka dial-up to satellite internets an even wash, maybe even a few bucks in the black. So I called the cell phone company to get out of my deal, except them bitches don’t budge, trying to charge me a $200 per phone (meaning $400) disconnect bullshit fee, because I accepted the phones they sold me on the cheap, and in the fine print, even though I never signed anything, by using them I agree to their terms and conditions. So I looked up all types of shit. I called them begging poverty due to the economy, which unfortunately isn’t that far from the truth, sadly, and they had no options. I was like, “You know, as I’m losing everything, and trying to be straight with my creditors, most places understand how things are working right now and have plans. Maybe I’m naive and most people who have cell phones are impervious to current conditions, but I would assume you had something in place to help people work it out.” Dude or chick would be like, well we can do this or that and it’d be a little cheaper, oh no wait, you have the cheapest plan already, and I’d be like, “Look, this is not a case of me paying or not paying my bill. I am about to be homeless, and a cell phone is useless to me, and you’re trying to charge me $400 more when I can’t even pay my bills as they are or feed my kids...” and that type of thing because I like to put it on the customer service people. I know it’s just a job, but fuck it, they should get a different job and not enable those assholes to separate themselves from the bullshit rules they set in place.
Well, none of the sad sack phone talks with customer service reps, asking for superiors worked. So I did internet research, which said basically you’re fucked unless you see a change in your contract, which you can always cancel afterwards. But that never happens, or we never look at that part of our bill (though we will now bitches!). They can drop me with no charge, but I can’t drop them even though I got the cheapest ass phone each time, because they give us phones for blah blah blah blah, even though I was like, “Tell me how much the fucking phone costs so I can pay you back and not get hit with the two hundred bones.” Talking like that helps make them uncomfortable, which makes the long, unending, unsatisfying customer service phone calls more enjoyable in retrospect.
Basically, after calls galore and internet research, my best bet was to make them not want me as a customer. So with my home phone set up as part of my network, not to mention the two cells, I’ve been setting them both on roam and putting them in the one window in our compound where you get reception and having them call each other and then sit there. We are halfway through the month, and if you count both phones separately, we’re up to about 8000 minutes. I’m hoping for the around 30,000 roaming minutes by the end of the month, to make them cancel my contract of their own volition. Fucking cocksuckers. I expect them to put in fine print on the back of my bill how I can’t call phone-to-phone anymore, to try and slip one on me, and then I can cancel with no charge, although them assholes probably already slipped one on me without me knowing and I’ll owe them $7000 at the end of the month. Which means I’m gonna kill Mr. Verizon, unless he’s a chick, in which I’ll sex her up real good, make her fall in love with me, get her pregnant, and abandon her, leaving her with a child cursed with my genetics where you do really elaborate things to get out of financial obligations accepted as normal by the rest of society, because you refuse to be like them people, at all costs.

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