Retirement Plans

I expect that when I am retired I will have time to devote myself full time to the joy of dealing with the utility and telecommunications companies, because avoiding being ripped off by these monopolists is really a full-time job.  Two recent examples:

1. I don’t have a smart phone.  I hate telephones, so I get by with a dumb phone and a pre-paid plan.  I spend about $200/year on my cellphone.  My wife is similar, but she probably spends half as much.  

I recently travelled to Europe, and I needed to make exactly one phone call when I arrived.  There was no simple way to avoid making the phone call, and having a phone with which to place the call was easier than stealing an iPhone from an unsuspecting tourist.  I called my service provider and asked if there was a simple and inexpensive way for me to use my phone for three days in Belgium.  Three disconnections and over an hour later, I thought I had a way to do so FOR FREE!  I was told that they would send me a new sim card.  If I sent the card back within 30 days, there would be no charge.  A $26 charge would show up on my credit card, but it would be removed once I returned the sim card.  This sounded too good to be true.  Had my call been re-routed to some scam artist?  On the Internet, I checked and re-checked the number I had called while I was on hold (I had a lot of time to check), and I had the customer service person repeat himself several times to make certain I understood the terms.

Very long story short, my service provider did charge me $26, and then wanted to add something like $80/month for the new phone service I had allegedly ordered.  After perhaps another two hours on hold/arguing with “customer service” people, the service provider did what they had repeatedly told me was impossible.  They gave me a full refund (except for the original $26, which was a shipping and handling charge).  I could live with that.  I could console myself that being able to make that phone call was worth $26, even though I would never have agreed to that in advance.

One week later, I received a $50 refund from the telephone service provider.  I have no idea how they arrived at that figure.  I chalk it up to even more incompetence.  I wanted to try to return the refund, to which I am not entitled  (beyond the $26), but I know that doing so will take far more time than it is worth.  I will consider the “refund” a partial payment for the extensive legal advice I offered about the fraud in which they had engaged by repeatedly telling me that the sim care would cost me nothing and then trying to charge me for it.  

2. Adventures with the cable company:

• Unannounced, guys from the cable company dig a hole in our backyard and leave us with an open cable box with cables shooting out of the top of it.  They tell me they will be back in a day or two to close the box and bury the lines going across my yard and the yards of my neighbors on either side.
• We receive notice that we must upgrade our cable box, and we follow onscreen instructions to have it sent to us.
• We receive an invoice with a new charge for “additional outlets”
• We install the new cable box and while speaking with someone who activates it remotely, I set up a service call so that they can come back, close up the cable box, fill in the hole and bury the cable before the ground freezes.
• The next morning I receive a call confirming the cancellation of my service call.
• I call back immediately, outraged that I have to re-schedule a service call that I never cancelled, and I am able to get it rescheduled, although the cable company still says that they have a record indicating, that in the 12 hours since I scheduled the service call,  I called them to cancel it.
• While on the phone, I ask them about the “additional outlet” charge, and they inform me that it is a shipping and handling charge for the new cable box (that they insisted that I needed).

I pointed out that it is misleading (to say the least) to call a shipping and handling charge an “additional outlet” charge.  Because I was livid, or perhaps just because I bothered to ask, they agreed to remove the “additional outlet” charge.  Similarly, we are now enjoying a $50 “discount” on our cable services because I threatened to switch to a satellite dish and because we “had not had a discount in a while.”  

It does now seem to be the policy of the monopolists that they will just keep raising the rates of loyal customers until they crack, and then they will lower them until they see an opportunity to start ratcheting up the price again.  Last year, I got fed up with what we were being charged for garbage collection, placed a phone call, and got the bill reduced by 50%.  I then told my neighbors that they should all do the same.  And they did.  And it worked.

How all of this slips below the radar and is not the subject of federal regulation or class actions is beyond me!