Cell Phones

I’m an old guy, and use my cell phone as a phone.  I actually wound up needing the ability to text, and I didn’t want to pay per use, so I jumped on line and att.com and added an unlimited texting and picture package to my family plan for a relatively small amount of money.

Then, I made a mistake.  Now having a texting package, I thought that it would be nice if my Bride and I might have telephones with actual keyboards to ease the texting……So I scoured eBay and found us a couple of used, cheap, phones that would work with AT&T and had keyboards.  Why buy used you ask?  Because I’m out of contract with AT&T, we had no need or desire to use our phones as itty-bitty computers, and I don’t want to be in a two-year commitment with AT&T again.  All I wanted was the ability to text a little easier.  Really.  So, the first phone that came in was a Samsung Blackjack with a qwerty keypad.  I removed my SIM card from it’s previous home (an LG Slider), and slid it into the Blackjack.  It was wonderful. 

Until the next day.  When AT&T sent me a text message.  Informing me as follows:  “We hope you are enjoying your Smartphone!” and later in the message “We have added an appropriate Smartphone data plan for your device.”  The rest of their babbling insisted that this was all for my own good, etc., but it never did inform me of how much more this mandatory data plan would pick my pocket for.  So I jumped onto their web-site and checked. 

Twenty-five bucks more a month—Exclamation Point, Exclamation Point.  So, utilizing their user friendly site, I tried to change the mandatory data plan to the least expensive one listed—15 bucks a month—My panties were still in a wad over this nonsense, but 15 is better than 25.  No Way Jose.  Wouldn’t let me make the change.  So I called them by dialing 611 on the old LG, which, by this time, was the home of my SIM card.

Somewhere close to 30 or 45 minutes later, Alex Brown, my customer service rep, had removed the charge.  Case closed.

If there was a reasonable alternative, I’d drop AT&T like a bad habit, but there is no real alternative.  I’ll offer the phones I bought for sale on eBay.  There’s really nothing wrong with them if you don’t mind having a mandatory data plan.  It’s really for your own good.