<< February 1, 2005 >>
i'm free

hang in there, this is a long one. and i don't even know if it's going to be funny.

so i lost my cell phone this weekend. it is an unfortunate time, as my at&t contract has about 6 weeks left on it, and the iTMS phones aren't out yet. but, my current phone wasn't bluetooth (at&t sent it for free when they were merging with cingular, since the t68i didn't work on cingular's network) so it would be nice to get a bluetooth phone like my friends joe and robert. it would almost be like 2000 again, us with the same phones! although i don't think we'd hit these phones out of each other's hand, the batter popping out like we used to do with our old sanyos (which are still the best cell phone i have used).

anyway, t-mobile no longer has the sony ericsson (hi janice! i'll buy a nokia when they make a small bluetooth phone with a normal keypad layout), and cingular has some ulgy t637 or something. so i went down to coolidge corner yesterday. i kind of love doing cell phone stuff there, because there 4 cell phone places within like 300 feet, so you can say "well if you won't help me, maybe someone across the street at t-mobile, or next door at nextel (i bluff in this case) will!"

also, phil had offered to loan me his at&t phone. while it isn't a long term solution as it doesn't have bluetooth, it gives me a little more leverage power with the drivelling wireless telco masses.

i set out with the following goals, listed here in descending order of importance:

1. getting a bluetooth phone that does not rival the former soviet union in size
2. giving at&t as little money as possible
3. giving t-mobile as little money as possible
4. some other things that i can't remember
5. keeping my number

i had a few options at my disposal:

1. get a new at&t phone and sim card, and wait out my current contract
2. get a new phone and sim card at t-mobile, keeping my number but breaking my current contract
3. get a new phone, sim card, and number at t-mobile, and keep paying the rest of my at&t bill
4. get a phone at nextel, so i could annoy all my friends with that beeping noise

at some point phil had been able to decrease his at&t plan without a new contract, although increasing his play required a new contract. i don't understand why they are ok with getting less money but not more, but maybe that's why i'm not bankrupt or under acquisition.

so the most likely thing is #3 above, in addition to changing my at&t plan to the lowest allowable by arbitrary corporate policy.

the first stop was the at&t wireless store, to find out how much switching to t-mobile before my contract was up was going to cost me. apparently it was two or three times the amount i had left in my contract, and that would violate importance #2. i couldn't just pay the rest of my contract, or leave it open without a phone number, and they didn't have any sim cards for at&t (but i could sign up for a new cingular contract no problem!) so the only option left was #3. i headed to t-mobile.

there are times that i wish tycho taught creative ranting class, because i lack the ability to express my shock at the size of the motorola v600. the best way to describe it is to say that it is two sony ericsson phones, attached by a breakable hinge. were my friends up for hanging out with me, risking a broken foot if the phone should happen to slip out of my hands? no way.

so i told the t-mobile guy what i wanted, and asked what happened to the sony ericssons. he then tried to sell me all the phones that i didn't want, claiming that phones supported bluetooth when they didn't, etc. etc. i asked if i stole one from my friend, would i be able to get a sim card for it from him. he said definitely, just bring it in and i'll be set up in no time.

i was hungry, so i went over to quizno's for a classic italian with no tomatoes. the guy working there sliced the bread, put the dressing on, then reached for a two-handed mound of the vile vegetable.

my current plan was to just buy an unlocked phone from sony ericsson, get an at&t sim card and then switch when my contract expires. so i call at&t up to find out when my contract ends, and she says it ended on march 6, 2004! i asked when the contract began, and she said march 16 2004. i was not quite sure what to say, but it should be obvious now why at&t have so many financial problems. then she asked if i could hold for a minute, and when she came back she said yeah, i wasn't under contract anymore.

it would have been nice to know that a year ago, when i signed up for a new contract, but it's ok. these are the sort of cosmic rewards that make modern life so... rewarding.

i just talked to another at&t support person, and they confirmed this, so i am off to the t-mobile store with phil's old phone in hand, to change the world.

so i was trying to get at&t to put in writing that my contract is expired, so that i have something to show for myself when they charge me the early cancellation fee. the person on the phone said to go to the store, the person at the store said to call, the next person on the phone could not fathom that i would have any problem, and noted that my contract was up in the account. there's nothing more i can do; it is fate at this point.

i got a new sim card with t-mobile. no hassle, and no deposit. he was going to charge me like $20 for the sim card, but my cc payment hasn't gone through yet so it got denied. "don't worry about it," he said. good times indeed.