Cellular customer disservice (can you say "argggh!?)

Backspin By Mark Gibbs, Network World
May 29, 2009 02:59 PM ET

. What's this?

Like everyone else in these tough times I am looking to save money. Sure, I'd like to get a new Mac Pro with two 2.93GHz quad-core processors, 32GB memory, 4TB disk storage, two NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 video cards and two 30-inch Cinema displays (can you say “sexy”?), but spending nearly $10,500 is not in my budget at present.

I'd also love to have an iPhone, but the service plans you have to take illustrate there is no competition (can you say "monopoly"?) and show highway robbery is not a lost art, so it is easy for me to see I don't actually need one.

In fact, considering that cell service is generally of poor quality everywhere, it really doesn't matter much which service provider you choose. As my contract with T-Mobile had recently expired I looked for the best deal I could find.

Again, if there was really any competition in the cell market, then I would find pricing plan variation from carrier to carrier, particularly in these tough times. But no such luck, which tells you that cellular service is not really a competitive market (can you say "ya think?!").

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Anyway, I looked around for the best deal which turned out to be with Sprint. Accordingly, I placed my order for three phones via Sprint's Web site and requested that our home number, which was on a Vonage line that didn't get much use, be ported over to my wife's phone. Voila, the new plan and the loss of the Vonage line equaled a savings of more than $100 per month (that's a lot of moderately priced Cabernet).

Then the fun began. The phones arrived in the evening a couple of days after ordering so I immediately set about getting them working (can you say "this probably won't turn out well"?).

Sprint implies in their documentation that their phones are pre-registered but you still wind up talking to a customer service rep.

This went fine until we got cut off (can you say "of course"?). She called back, I pressed the wrong button, and she went to voice mail. Before I could get her message I had to initialize the voice mail (not a quick process) which made hearing her lie that she had called me several times just that little bit more annoying.

Her message told me that I needed to dial *2 to get back to the service center but that number just told me to hang up and call from another phone. Words do not exist to express my irritation at this point.

I then got some guy who was obviously in India and claimed to be named "Dwayne" or some equally implausible name for an Indian. And here I need to make it clear that I don't dislike Indians any more than I dislike anyone else (how can anyone discriminate on the basis of race or color when there are so many other reasons to dislike people?).

But here's the thing; now, whenever I hit any company's customer disservice line and hear the exotic accents of "Martha" or "Clarence" or "Bob" (for heaven's sake, you aren't fooling us, really) I immediately lose hope. And when the CSR is obviously reading from a script, confirms every exchange in excruciating detail, and thanks me for every word I utter, I also know that I am going to get service that, if it isn't completely useless, will be at best, pathetic.