bitterdiva

Cingular Shenaniganary

After several run-arounds, misinformation, annoying employees, and an unintelligible insurance claim representative, I am back to having my cell phone and long distance. The Nokia 3360 is by far the worst cell phone to ever have in one's possession, but if you are to be cheap and get it, I would suggest the insurance. Apparently this Nokia product has a major flaw, it sucks - sucks greater than a 12-year-old Thai Hooker when the Navy docks into town. This isn’t just an American flaw too, when I was traveling in Ireland, I saw a teen girl in a McDonald’s bathroom with my phone and asked her if she had the same problems as I did, and sure enough, she did. The software, according to the technician that took a look at mine, degrades to a point where it chokes on itself and annoys the user by constantly asking to set the time and date.

Saturday, goo, k, and I were off running errands (buying an air conditioner). I figure, hell, if we’re on Central Ave and near the Cingular store, I might as well get the hamster wheel spinning on replacing the phone that had been broken for months. Walk in, get sent to service, greet the stupid office bitch with, “hi, I have the infamous Nokia 3350 phone and it’s broken with the typical Nokia 3360 problems. I need to get a replacement.” She replies, “what’s it doing? Saying No Service?”. Knowing full well that this is more common than a hetero male’s love of white-cotton panties, I blink at her for a millisecond and begin in the myriad of issues this beast has: “it continuously turns off and on, I can’t press any buttons, it constantly asks to set the date and time, and yes, No Service.” Handing over the doomed phone to the tech, I knew I was going to be blessed with a blatant statement of the beast being dead. About five minutes later I get called, the technician rambles, “the software has probably degraded not allowing it to function, it’s broken.” Expecting this simple reply especially the broken part I ask what to do about getting a full one. I basically was sent to the front to upgrade my contract and get a new phone. However, my mom had the foresight to purchase the insurance plan for the phone, should I lose it (I’m bad at losing expensive things), have it stole, break it, or drop it in the toilet.

I hang around the front desk of the store while I’m waiting for sales idiot to help an old woman decide that she doesn’t want to spend $90 on a hands free set nor $40 on one. Some other woman is being thick with the inability of working her phone and attempts to grab his attention luckily losing the battle. I explain the situation, how I have insurance, how the phone is broken and that I need a new one. He checks out to guarantee that I have insurance and proceeds to hand me a pamphlet about the insurance plan. Realizing that he is probably not making a commission (if it’s such the case that he works off of commission) or that I’m just a punk ass kid, he decided it really wasn’t worth his effort to truly help me. I was directed back to service to speak with them about filling out an insurance claim.

Back to service, the woman who handles insurance claims wasn’t in, so office bitch tells me to call her on Monday, have her fill out the claim and hook myself up with a phone, which she tells me wouldn’t be the same model and I could upgrade for $10 more. Monday rolls around, I spoke to the insurance woman, I had to call the insurance company first and fill out the claim. I call the insurance company, the heavy accented woman who sounds like a cross between Carmen Miranda and Mistress Cleo proceeds to ask me a series of questions about the account and phone. One of them was, “are you allowed access to this account?” I reply, “my mother gave me this phone so I sure as hell believe so.” Near the end of the phone call I need to inform her which store I would like to pick up the new one, I tell her the one on Central Ave in Albany… she couldn’t find the address to the store so she asks me for the exact address. I’m like, you’re the one with a store locator on your system, I’m not a address book, but with the wonderful internet at my hands I provide it.

Long story almost over, the bad juju continues as I attempt to get there before the closing at 6pm. K gets out at 5, it takes 15 to get to our exit, on a traffic-less day. It would so happen that an accident on the eastbound side of 90 near 5 and 4 would cause delays, but the masses are asses and traffic was backed up on 90 westbound starting at exit 6 due to curiosity delays. Curiosity schmuriosity, get your stupid ass moving and bloody forget about what damage the idiots on the other side did. Arriving just in time (10 minutes) I pick up the same damn phone (the infamous 3360 (thirty-three-shitty)) except in the cool grey and silver colour, costing me $50 because they increased the rate of insurance claims.

I almost strangled someone that day with my new re-charger, an addition to my collection of three. Hey John, need an extra one?

04:00 PM

Comments

Posted by: kraftus at June 17, 2003 09:18 PM

Posted by: kraftus at June 17, 2003 09:24 PM

Posted by: Groundzero at June 18, 2003 12:53 AM

Posted by: mersidotes at June 18, 2003 08:30 AM

Posted by: xtine at June 18, 2003 08:37 AM

Posted by: texasyankee at June 18, 2003 09:15 PM

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