elesjuan

iTrader: (11)

I lul'd at these but this one really bothers me..

Why do people spend so much time crying about contracts? Worked 4 years at Verizon wireless and constantly had to hear people **** and moan about how they're stuck in contract and they're not going to sign another one, they're out of contract and they're not going to get into another one.. Blah blah ******* blah.

Fact of the matter is walking into _________ Cellular company and buying a phone for $0.99, or 10 bucks, 100 bucks, 200 bucks, whatever... You're buying something at a significantly discounted price and signing into that contract means that you're going to retain your service long enough for the provider to make back some of the money they've lost by giving away a $500+ cellular handset for pennies. Don't want a contract? Don't sign one, but also don't **** and moan that you're expected to pay full RETAIL price for a new telephone when your irresponsible dumbass dunks the phone in a ******* toilet.

I hear the same thing about cable or internet services.. They offer you a year of service for $20.00 a month when typical service would cost $50, then the person bitches because they're expected to pay the second year at $40 a month.

Recently I bought a new ICOM HF radio directly from the manufacture 3 months before it was even released to the market at about $800 less than projected retail prices. Had to sign a contract that the radio wouldn't be sold for at least 24 months which I happily did. Why do you think they required this? Company was doing me a huge favor and wanted to make sure I wasn't just going to flip the radio and make a buck behind their back.. Point? Contracts are a part of doing business, and a part of life. Don't like it? Don't sign it. Plan to sign it? Why not read it first and make sure you understand what you're writing your name on. Unlike what Congress does, sign **** without reading it.

icantthink4155

iTrader: (12)

I have no issues with contracts. I literally spend my day trying to trick people into them. And I do mean trick, everyone thinks its some sort of scam. Sure you can get prepaid for super cheap. Guess why its cheap? **** phones, **** customer service, **** reception. Straight Talk is $45 for unlimited talk text and web. Sorta. It jumps off other carriers towers, so they drop your calls first. Guess what happens if something goes wrong with your phone? You get to talk to some guy in Guam, thats had a week of American accent training, and he wasnt top of his class.

Vashthestampede

iTrader: (17)

Sounds like a job I'd be proud of.

elesjuan

iTrader: (11)

So you work for Cricket huh?

fooger03

iTrader: (2)

This bothers me.

Why does the typical service cost $50?

What the hell are they doing that would possibly make it undesireable to do business with me for $20/month for basic cable in the first place? What the hell is the marginal cost of one more customer? It's certainly not timely customer service, that's for damn sure.

If they can offer me service for $20/month for the first year (and I've never had a cable company ask me to sign a contract in the first place) then why the hell do they think they can charge me $50/month for the second year? They must absolutely be under the assumption that I'm too damned lazy or retarded to simply switch to the other cable company and get their *first year* deal for a year....before coming back. My friend had a problem with his cable company, so he called them up and bitched and complained and threatened to switch cable companies. Do you know what they did? They gave him 6 months of FREE cable so that he wouldn't switch. Do you know what that tells me? Cable companies have so little money wrapped up in the marginal cost of one more customer, that they are willing to forgo revenue from a customer for HALF A YEAR in order to ensure that they don't lose a customer permanently. At $50/month, they have just lost $300 to him - at what cost to profits? I'm willing to bet that once he starts paying for his cable service again, they will break even on profit within the first month.

"Competition in the communications industry in America?" What a ******* crock of ****. It's nothing more than a government legitimized oligopoly.

Now, contracts with cell phones....I can let that fly.

But:

I would be much happier if I were offered a no-contract option which worked like this: If I select "no contract", I pay for the full cost of the phone. The additional money I pay for the phone is then divided by 12 (so If new contract customers get a $300 discount on all new phones, that over 12 months would be $25/month) I've decided it should be 12 months because sprint offers me an upgrade every 12 months, unlike 18 or 24 months with the other guys. This tells me that they expect to break even on the discounted phone within 12 months. That $25/month should then be a discount applied to my bill every month, indefinitely.

Under the current scheme, if I keep my same cell phone for more than a year, the cell phone company win big time. Under my plan, the consumer wins if he can keep his phone in one piece for any more than a year. Of course consumers will still have the option of selecting the contract option.

Speaking of cell-phone prices and consumer extortion. I was able to spend a less-than-lovely year in rural Egypt. As most of you all know, Egypt is a third world country. The only thing that keeps Egypt from being thought of by most Americans as an equivalent of Syria, or Iraq, or Jordan, or Sudan is the simple fact that it has giant rock piles. If Egypt didn't have giant rock piles (and trust me, the Egyptians that live in Egypt now are NOT the descendants of the Egyptians that built the rock piles) it would literally be just another shitty third-world counrty. That being said, the consumer base for cellular telephones is relatively small compared with the US. When I was in Egypt, I purchased a relatively simple Nokia with global GSM technology for $80, no contract. At the same time, I purchased a pre-paid card for the phone for $20.

Now I was in Egypt for military reasons, so it wasn't like I was going for days or weeks at a time without callling anyone. Quite the contrary, I usually expected to have at least one short conversation per day, and on occasion, it would be maybe 3 or 4 per day.

That $20 prepaid card lasted me an entire YEAR. Broken down over $12 months, I had cellular service for less than $2/month. I don't know if I ever got close to actually using all of that $20 either. At the end of the year, I gave the phone to my replacement with service still active. For all I know, I could have used less than half of that.

Now compare that with what it costs for simple cellular service here. Consider that this third world country had probably far less than one cellular phone per familly versus the united states with more than one cellular phone per person. It's quite obvious to me that the average cost of me, a simple phone user, in Egypt was less than $2/month.

AND THAT'S THE AVERAGE COST, NOT THE MARGINAL COST.

What do you think the average cost of a simple cell user in the US is? Surely we have MUCH greater density of cell phones than Egypt does (though probably nothing compared to the cell phone density of South Korea or Japan) and so it should be significantly cheaper than Egypt. After all, more phones per tower means you're spreading the cost of the tower over more users, right?

If I get a basic talk + text cell phone plan from Sprint, I have to fork out a minimum of $35/month. Does that mean that it costs Sprint nearly $35/month to provide me service? I think not, and I think it's bullshit.

Back before color cell phones existed (and I did end up owning the first color phone on the US market) I had a cell phone with a data cord. If I connected that data cord to the serial port on my laptop computer (which I occasionally did) I could use the phone as a modem and dial sprints internet connection (something like *999 on the phone) and surf the web over my cell phone on my computer.

Anyone care to take a gander at how much it cost me to tether to the internet through Sprint?

Anyone?

Anyone?

It was free. Un-******* believable. I paid like $30/month for calling and I got free internet access through a cable and software that Sprint *provided*. Sure, it wasn't 3G or anything fancy like that, and I had to set the baud rate for the data connection in the phone's settings menu.

This is what that bad boy looked like:


Not exactly tiny, the thing was probably 1 1/4 inches thick. I got it as a hand-me-down from dad, it was probably his 3rd or 4th phone, and probably his first that wasnt a bag-phone.

redfred18t

iTrader: (1)

in my town, you only have one choice for cable service, shitty charter. It's bullshit. Lots of towns around here are the same way with only one cable service available.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

This can all be very easily solved. Buy the phone and the plan as two separate entities.

I have a fancy MyTouch sliding-keyboard Android phone. And I have service for it through T-Mobile. Want to know how long my contract period is? One month.

icantthink4155

iTrader: (12)

Absolutely not.

Connection center in Walmart.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

you guys realize that communications companies make the largest profit margin of any other business out there right?

Vashthestampede

iTrader: (17)

When we moved here we had to get Charter as well. I ******* HATE Charter. The people on the phone are all clueless unless you ask to speak with a supervisor. The install guy that came was a moron. Finally, after one of the HD boxes stopped working the kid they sent somehow managed to break the HDMI input in the back of one of our TVs.

I'm trying like hell to get ATT U-versre over here, seeing that my cell phone bill would just mix into the TV/Internet bill and I'd save a little over $100 a month!

I got the Charter supervisor to hook me up with a middle ground discount price after the initial 6 month discount is gone. What they told me I'd get and what I actually have on the TV is night and day. When they say "you'll get everything but the premium channels", I assumed premium meant Starz, HBO, Cinemax, etc etc. Apparently G4TV is considered a premium channel, along with 250 others I didnt know about.

Efini~FC3S

iTrader: (4)

T-mobile's new plans are sort of like Fooger's hypothetical one. You pay *full* price for the phone and it is divided over something like 20 months. The price they charge for the phone and data plans are much cheaper than the other providers and then you add in the monthly payment for the phone.

What they don't tell you is that you don't have to buy a phone from them. Like Joe mentioned above, you can buy a phone separately and then take it into T-mobile and get there $50 unlimited data plan. Or you can do like myself, and not upgrade your phone every 1-2 years. After I pay off the phone my bill will go down like $15 a month, which is enough motivation for me to hold onto an older phone for at least another year or so.

Faeflora

iTrader: (2)

You pay for your own cell service and phone?

elesjuan

iTrader: (11)

Jesus.. lol. You're not going to find me debate anything here. Getting kind of tired of Time Warner jacking my internet prices up. Used to get their services for free, then canceled everything except premium internet which I still subscribe to. At first they only wanted $29/month for it, but slowly started to jack the price back up to the $56/month I'm currently paying for it. Think in a day or two I'll give them a buzz threatening to cancel it, see what kind of deals they'll make. Its a pretty nice service, rarely down (much to my surprise, only 2 times in the last 6 years) and always very fast. Typically get a minimum of 20mbps down and have seen it peak at 40 before.

Ive had service through sprint for about the last 8 years now, sometime around 4 years ago I switched to the unlimited voice/data/text thing for $99/month. Typically use around 4000 minutes a month, 2-3000 text, and around 2gb of data. Makes me feel like I'm getting my monies worth even though they're making bank off people like me. Don't pay for tethering (thats retarded they think its okay to charge for it..) but have the ability to do so with USB or 802.11 however I really don't use it that often.

Last 3 phones I've had through sprint have been high end android smartphones. My current is an EVO which cost me $150 out of pocket after my 12 month upgrade period. Sold my previous phone in the parking lot after the upgrade for $150.00 so the EVO was actually free- Got the previous phone in the same manor. That's what responsible people can do if they take care of their equipment.

You do realize that some cellular companies charge like $0.25 for a ******* MMS PICTURE MESSAGE!?!?!? With that same understanding, I'd venture a guess that picture cost $0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 to send from a phone in the US to say, Venus... Same goes for SMS text messages. What actually costs the companies money is voice. I understand the costs of infrastructure, equipment, roaming agreements with Gestapo third party mom and pop companies and everything.... There is a lot of cost involved but damn, when you've got 20 million subscribers...

Back at Verizon I had someone come in with a $3500.00 bill for sending text messages to someone in Canada from New York State.. ******' Really???? Cause you know, sending an email from your house to a home in Canada costs $260.00 a message. It doesn't? That's odd.... because that text message used the same piece of fiber........


I expense mine. Otherwise it's tax deductible anyway.