Thursday, October 2, 2008

The Cosa Nostra Provides My Cellular Service






















Extortion
is a criminal offense, which occurs, when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion (definition from Wikipedia). Recently I had to complain to my cellular provider about my $80 phone bill because of extra text charges and browsing, when, since I've owned my phone, I had the idea that my texts were unlimited and never intentionally did any browsing. Whatever, I made the texts, so I paid it and had an extra $2 a month added to up my texting allowance. The next bill came and there was an extra $20 charge for browsing and this time I knew I hadn't done any. Well it turns out that I have a $20 button on my phone and if I accidentally push it, it connects to my providers server costing me $20. So I called to have browsing disabled to avoid such problems in the future because I don't browse with my cell phone. Apparently they can't do that so their solution was to charge me an extra $3 a month for unlimited browsing. I know that three dollars isn't a lot of money, it's just the fact that I have to pay for a service that I don't use. It reminds me of the Mafia's practice of collecting protection money from businesses to "protect" them from the Mafia's own thugs. Also, it bothers me that every time I call to complain about an extra charge, their solution is to upsell me a more expensive package.
Bastards!

2 comments:

Adrian J.K. Shum, CGD said...

It's one of the reasons why I don't have a cellular contract these days... dealing with the customer service reps was always a nightmare whenever I had any problems. I feel for ya' bud.

Doug said...

Thanks man.