Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Topic: Make sure you watch for stuff like this: (Read 2082 times) previous topic - next topic

Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

October 03, 2005, 05:02:31 PM

Today I got my Net connection speed increased from 1.5mb/256kb to 5.0mb/640kb.. and it was essentially a free upgrade.

Now why is this a warning? Well that's where the "essentially free" part comes in.

We get our ADSL directly from Sprint, because they're also our local phone company. This is the second time now that they've changed billings and speed plans significantly and not told us. First time was when they had us paying almost $100/month for the fastest ADSL connection they had.. they reduced the upstream speed something like 128k for some new plan and cut the price roughly in half. (to what we've been paying for the past year or so, I think) This time around, they added two new speed grades.. 3.0mb/512kb for $44.99/mo., and this plan for $54.99/mo.. and left us on the old speed at the old price. If I hadn't poked around their sales site for high speed internet access, we'd still be at the old speed and price.

I know it almost goes without saying, but you have to keep your eye on the people you get these sorts of services from. Hopefully even a few of you will read this and check up on your own services and make sure they're not screwing you. The extra speed is nice, but it would've been even nicer to hear from them when they first offered it.

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #1 – October 04, 2005, 01:58:05 PM

That reminds me of the old man that used to own my house. He was still paying SBC the lease fee for his rotary phone until my folks and I pointed that out to him in 1999. We figured over the 15 years after the big Bell breakup, he essentially gave SBC $1800 for the phone.

My folks recently were fed up with their SBC rates. They had all the features you can get on a local phone, plus a Privacy Manager. Mom said the bill was $45/month for basic phone, no long distance. She called SBC and said they were unwilling to do anything for her, as far as a price break or combining features. So after 35 years of paying a Bell for phone service, she dropped them for another company whose price is about half for the same features--and they got free long distance minutes thrown in.

You would think companies should have a responsibility to their long-time customers...or any customers, for that matter. Guess they don't feel they have to anymore. 'Buyer beware' was never truer than today.

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #2 – October 04, 2005, 04:37:35 PM

Or you could live in the F'n sticks like me and not have a high speed option. And dish internet has so much latency it seems slower than dialup untill you download something. but it his hella expensive

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #3 – October 04, 2005, 04:45:51 PM

Phone companies suck ass. That's prolly why me mum changes companies like the wind. They screw her over and then she switches. They give her $100 for her to come back and screw her over again and she switches again. Now why would you pay someone to use your service when you could leave the prices alone and have a customer for life? Blockheads.

I remember this one time I was late for a payment by 6 hrs and they cut my phone off. I just happened to get paid on the day that the bill's date was on and was walking out the door to pay when I decided to use the phone. No dial tone. WTF??? Paid it. Phone was back on by the time I got home, but sheesh. No notice or nothing.

Cell phones suck too, I don't understand the concept of paying for minutes. Biggest scam running, besides credit cards. But Verizon has been good to me thus far so screw the land line. I got enough quarters if need be. xD

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #4 – October 04, 2005, 07:52:56 PM

Cell phones do suck. I just got one after being without one for about ten years (actually, my father and I split on a "family plan"). The plan was advertised at $35/month for two phones, so we figured "What the hell, it's only $17.50 each".

Wrong. In addition to the $35/month subscription there is a $7 "system access fee" PER PHONE! Now common sense would dictate that a subscription to a service should include the system access fee, but nope. It costs extra. Kinda like subscribing to cable TV but having to pay extra to connect your TV to the cable. The $35/month became $49. Add to that the 911 fee ($2/phone), and we're up to $53. Caller ID is an extra $5 per phone (I got caller ID on mine, my father didn't) so we're talking $58. After taxes we each end up paying nearly $35 - coincidentally the advertised cost of the two phones together.

And then there's the minutes. I probably wouldn't use 25 minutes in a month, but even still, I resent the changes. An "evening and weekend" plan used to mean free local calling after 5PM and before 7AM on weekdays and free weekends. It seems that it now means after 8:00 pm! And they actually offer an "extended evening" package, that brings it back to the original 5:00PM for an extra $5/month (again, per phone). Caller ID used to come standard, now it's a $5 per phone option.

And got a camera phone. I figured it'd be just like a camera, where you could transfer pics to the computer. Nope. I have to send each picture to my "online album" where I can then download them. I get 100 free messages (either text, video or photo) a month - anything over that is 55 cents apiece. And to make it worse, Rogers (my provider) sends me spam over the ed thing, and every one I get counts toward the 100 free ones. I tried "opting out" but they keep coming. It hasn't happened yet, but when the time comes that I get dinged for downloading one of my own photographs because Rogers spammed me so many times, it is going to be the end of the world for the poor Rogers representative that is unfortunate enough to answer my call.

On top of that, since I must send the images from my phone to a Rogers computer, if I'm in an area with no coverage I can't upload the pics. And even though their coverage map clearly shows that the area that my cottage is in is well covered (I checked before signing the contract), I can't get any signal here.

Of course, I also got one that uses MP3 ringtones, figuring I could load some Judas Priest into it (the intro to Victim of Changes, for example) for a custom ringtone. Nope. Ya gotta buy your ringtones. And the ones that Rogers offers are truly awful. So my fancy MP3 phone plays a boring standard ring when it goes off.

Needless to say, Rogers communications will never get my business again, and they are on the shiznitlist if anybody asks me if I like my phone or service.

[/rant]
[/derail]

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #5 – October 04, 2005, 10:45:25 PM

What model phone did you get? I haven't seen too many new model phones that haven't been able to be hooked up to a computer via a $6 ebay cable.

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #6 – October 04, 2005, 10:49:57 PM

When it comes to technology it pays to jump ship often, shop around and negotiate with them. I have had to cancel my cable twice to get what I wanted out of them. And don't you just love the "for new customers only" sales that your current phone/cell phone/cable company has. They are basically saying screw my current customers because I know they are too lazy to go through the hastle of switching to a diff. company. There is no loyalty points with these guys that's for sure. Just like when I wanted a new internet connection installed in my bedroom and the cable company said it was going to cost me like 60 bucks. I was thinking for what? A new customer would get like 3 for free so why shouldn't I get one for free after 3 years of being a loyal customer. I talked the sales lady down to $20.00 for the install but by the time I got to that point I was mad so I just told her to shut off the cable immediately. I had a new company scheduled to come out in 4 days. A few hours later the manager called me at work and said it was silly to cancel for those reasons and gave me the new connection I wanted for free and 3 months free HBO to remain a customer.

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #7 – October 04, 2005, 11:23:41 PM

You just gotta be one of those guys they think you wont be.

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #8 – October 04, 2005, 11:31:40 PM

Quote from: CougarSE

Or you could live in the F'n sticks like me and not have a high speed option. And dish internet has so much latency it seems slower than dialup untill you download something. but it his hella expensive

http://www.wildblue.com

I'm leaning towards them. In the same boat here...I am literally in the middle of a broadband dead spot. Our only hope is DSL which is supposed to be here sometime next year. But with the success I've had with the TV dish I'm willing to try WildBlue as soon as a dealer is near me. Their equipment seems cool (mmm....TV and broadband through the same dish, sign me up!) and they have nationwide Ka band coverage; equipment is around $300 after rebates, monthly fee for 500kbps download/128kbps upload is $50. Not nearly as pricey as DirecWay or Starband. Any satellite broadband is going to have latency--it's not for gaming. But streaming video and music isn't usually an issue. As everyone and their brother will say about it: it's better than dial-up!

I don't know if any of the other Bells have the same deal, but here in the Midwest we have SBC and you can save a bunch of money by combining services...I think Sprint may also do the same. My home phone (SBC), cell phone (Cingular, owned by SBC), long distance (SBC basic plan) and satellite dish (Dish Network 120-channel plan) are all combined on one bill. Total is about $120/month. I don't consider that expensive for all I'm getting. And with the combined bill I save around $20/month. That's like $240/year...definitely worth your time to combine if you can. It helps that I use the cell phone for all my long distance calls. And it's also sweet that I don't get 3 or 4 separate bills, which you know would all be due at different times! This has really simplified my life and worked within my budget perfectly.

I have had zero problems with the dish, BTW. Twice in the past year has it gone out, and only because it was raining so hard I couldn't even hear myself think. Cingular has been great here, no problems whatsoever with coverage. Calls do get dropped now and then; no biggie. I'm really, really, REALLY liking the rollover minutes too. My plan has like 500 rollover minutes a month, 250 anytime minutes, free nights and weekends (nights are after 9pm ET), call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID, the works. It's their $39.95/month plan; after the discounts with the combined bill it ends up being a svelte $35/month, INCLUDING all the regulatory and FCC fees. Very happy with everything SBC here. YMMV.

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #9 – October 04, 2005, 11:35:17 PM

Quote from: nirvanagod

What model phone did you get? I haven't seen too many new model phones that haven't been able to be hooked up to a computer via a $6 ebay cable.

It's a Sony Ericson Z500 or something like that (don't have it here at the moment). I bought it in March.

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #10 – October 05, 2005, 03:30:21 AM

Thunder Chicken, I had the same problem as you with T-Mobile, and then I bought a cable for my Motorola V300 and entered the wonderful world of phone hacking. My phone's memory sucks (~5MB) but at one point I copied the entire "Vaya Con Dios - Nah nah nah" mp3 on it as a ringtone, and then I also hacked it to play videos, show extra menus, remove/replace the stupid T-Mobile logos, modify the color schemes etc. All you need is a cable and an affinity for sniffing out the right software.

http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=sony+ericsson+z500+cable&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #11 – October 05, 2005, 04:19:22 AM

Ah ha! Another T-mobile member! I'm wondering if there's a cheaper version of the cable for my phone. (Samsung SGH-E315) The only one I've seen is about $80... WAY overpriced. If I had a cable then I'd be able to do cool things like,oh, I dunno, copy my pics to my PC.

I fear you've created a monster... let's just hope there's no way I can actually permanantly damage my phone or SIM card.

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #12 – October 05, 2005, 09:33:13 AM

Here's a link to a site that sells one for about $25 :

http://www.cellularfactory.com/pro.jsp?c=8799

Now, with regard to the monster theory: AFAIK, the sim card is not damageable, but you can always get it replaced very easily anyway. You can kill your phone if you modify the wrong settings, but at least for mine, it can always just be reflashed with the original firmware and Bob's your uncle. I don't think I've used my phone for taking pictures too often - py quality - but I still like it when I power it up and have a different start-up sound than the rest of the T-Mobile flock, together with a different color scheme. And I enjoyed keeping a guy at work up at night because his same model phone didn't have a video player (

) and customer service told him there wasn't one, yet every day I waltzed in and played him a different music video - Rammstein rocks :flip: .

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #13 – October 05, 2005, 04:13:03 PM

as far as phones go I probably have one of the cheapest. I get unlimited long distance regulare minutes and unlimited text. Also it is only about 50/ month including the "payment" for my phone. I could get it as low as $35. only thing that sucks is it uses radio waves instead of satilites. I drop calls at times, but as long as I am by a window inside it is usally okay. (it is also a local only service, two guesses why) but that is okay, cause I have left the state like 3 times in my life. And I get a solid like 50 or so square miles depending on which way I go.

Re: Make sure you watch for stuff like this:

Reply #14 – October 05, 2005, 05:18:30 PM

I don't even have a cell phone. Seems like a waste of money for me right now, and I cant' really afford $50 a month for a phone that I would hardly ever use.