[elky] Re: Boise roadster show (DVD slide shows and T-Mobile)
- From: Robert Adams <elcam84@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: elky@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:04:41 -0500
>I woulda had a Motorola Cliq smart phone/pda but T-mobile and WalMart
weren't exactly on speaking >terms. Seems that WalMart doesn't pay their
T-Mobile kiosk employees commission, while they DO at >the T-Mobile store.
The price for the unit at that store is $160. At WalMart (I really don't
like >shopping there...it's like rewarding bad behavior, but sometimes ya
gotta do what ya gotta do) the price >was $79. A no-brainer. I should be
able to get it tomorrow or I may have to wait until Monday.
That's goofy with all the cell phone companies. Big differences
between corporate stores, Authorized retailers etc and few know anything
about what they are selling.
>This is a strange deal. I had to call T-Mobile from WalMart and keep
pestering the guy on the phone >until I got 1) unlimited minutes and 2)
unlimited bandwidth for less than I was paying for 1500 minutes >a month on
my old plan. Then we tried to do a phone upgrade. I'm 17 months into a 2
year contract. I >kept at him and finally handed the phone to the lovely
young lady who was helping me and eventually the >guy, after 15 minutes of
pleading that he couldn't do anything, was able to flip a bit in my database
>record that would make me eligible for the upgrade.
Well the upgrade thing isn't an upgrade. Your monthly service it
your service fee and a monthly fee to pay for the subsidized phone you are
using. No such thing as a free phone it's subsidized by the monthly plan.
Hence if you haven't had the account for 2 years you haven't paid for the
phone you are using and aren't eligible for another subsidized phone.
I really wish they would do away with the crappy system we have in
the US. Just do like other countries. Buy a phone you like then get a
service. Well then you and up with fake carriers like Sprint, Verizon etc
that aren't real phone carriers but passenger pigeons using ancient
antiquated technology. It looks like Verizon is going to end up being the
first of them to finally switch over to a real GSM network instead of CDMA.
That will make for allot of competition in devices.
>Is anybody familiar with the "Red Tape Chronicles?" Well, I'll add more
about that later.
>Anyway, it takes some time to filter thru the system, I guess. So it
didn't show on WalMart's system. >The young lady (named Angel, with a
tattooed necklace...I wonder what she's gonna do when that >necklace doesn't
go with the wedding dress she chooses, yanno?) anyway, she printed out the
price and >suggested I go to the T-Mobile store and see if they would be
willing to match prices.
>I went to that store (about 100 yards across the parking lot and just told
the young lady there that she >had a choice: either accept the commission on
the lower price...and get something...or get nothing if they >wouldn't match
the price. Now this flies in the face of all logic, but she and another
lady talked about >it and finally decided that they couldn't do any
competitive price matching. So she got zero commission >and I'll go buy the
phone from WalMart after a day or so...or maybe Amazon.
>Robert: I understand your affinity for Nokia phones and ATT, but I'm ok
with T-Mobile's service. >The frequency's never posed any problems that I
know of and as a "long-term customer,
It will in the near future. T-mobile has had to resort to
buying a freak freq to gain them highspeed data. They had to buy the 1700mhz
that used to be used for analog TV. It will severly cripple the number of
devices that will be able to use highspeed data on their network as they
will have to be T-mobile only devices. The reason is that ATT owns most all
of the freq leases in the country and actually T-mob uses a whole lot of
ATTs network for voice over 1900mhz and they started using ATTs 850 for
voice cause T-mob totally sucked in range without it and ATT owns all those
freqs.
>they were willing to do all sorts of things for me to keep me. When I
dealt with ATT last year for the >cell modem, I got all sorts of runaround
and a $5 charge for this and a $5 charge for that and I really >wasn't happy
with their cell modem, which, according to the people at ATT, was the latest
and >greatest. I'd sure hate to see the oldest and worstest.
Try sprint or Verizon with their MIfi. WHat an utter piece of
garbage. I have spent hours with those things for people and they are
defective out of the box...
With ATT or any of them you have to know how their system works.
Most of that crap they are just trying to sell you and you don't need. But
for any of the modems or phones you are really better off owning your own un
screwed up by the carrier units. This also lets you pay month to month as
you need no contract and can drop them any month you want and it doesn't
cost you anything.
>So I'm not too worried about staying with T-Mobile. Besides...I like the
Cliq device. It's an Android >device, which, in my opinion, beats an iPhone
and an iPod Touch (I'd have to buy both to get the >functionality I'd get
with the Cliq device) all to hell. Besides...it's based on open source
Symbian Linux >rather than on the Mac OS. And there are a whole lotta free
apps for it. So it's what I've decided to >go with. If it's a bad
decision, I guess I'll have to live with it.
Symbian is a partially owned by Nokia OS and it's not
Linux but it seems similar. Android is it's own OS based from Linux though.
About half the phones in the world run Symbian. Used to
be nearly 60% which basically says that half the phones int he world are
Nokia phones. Pretty good for one company.
Android is a pretty good OS so far and in the same league
as Symbian when it comes to writing software for it and actually easier if
you know Linux.
>Back to the saga, I just put off the Cliq purchase (I'm wondering if I can
get Amazon's 1 cent deal, >now that they bit-fiddled with my "plan" and
upgrade status) until after the status change is reflected >in the external
data warehouse (at least that's how I envision it working) until I get back
from >Pocatello and then I should be ready for the Rockabilly Weekend in 2
weeks in Las Vegas. Confused >yet? Me, too.
Basically the same deals at Frys here. You can set up a plan
with ATT there and walk out the door with two nice phones for $20. and then
get your first bill in a month. Much easier and cheaper than the corporate
stores. Course the authorized ATT retailers here barely know how to turn on
a phone let alone sell them or services.
>Yanno, 3.5 hours of sleep isn't quite enough. But I'll have to wait until
this evening before I can >crash...Miles to go before I zonk out for the
night, just to trash Robert Frost's poem:
>http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/Stopping_ByWood.htm<http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/Stopping_ByWood.htm>
>I gotta get some other stuff done.
>Updates as news happens...and next time I should be able to post updates
from a smart phone.
>r
>Sent from my Dreadnought using that gawdawful Thunderbird email program
And this is sent from the gawdaful gmail web client. What a
PITA to use this thing. Gotta get it set up for pop mail again cause this is
a royal pain to use.
Robert Adams
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