Edumacate yourself!

Hey there everyone, it's time for another instalment of how you can keep yourself looking like a moron, and hopefully keep me from having an aneurysm at the same time.  For the latter my main recommendation is that you go be someone else's problem but if that's not an option we can go with the next available option which is making sure you know what you're looking for!  Lets begin.

One of the questions I recently had from more than one customer which absolutely floors me is when they ask "Is the 64 GB iPhone the fastest."  This is so wrong that it makes me wince a bit.  While you may hear the term 'gigabyte' being bandied by the tech savvy pretentious assholes at your local Starbucks, and saying how more GB is making their computer faster, they're discussing RAM.  In the case of the Apple iPhones the 16, 32, or 64 GB refers to the amount of internal hard drive space that the phone has, which can be important with the non-expandable memory of iPhones.  In basic terms, this is talking about how much music, videos, apps, pictures, etc the phone can hold on it.  The only difference between these models is going to be the price you pay, and the amount of available space to store stuff (protip: 32 GB is double the amount of space of 16 GB, and 64 GB is double the amount of 32 GB).  Just a few minutes of looking into these sort of things can help you out a long way when you're ordering a cell phone to be sure you get the phone you need and will last you for the duration of your service agreement.

Speaking of duration of service agreements, let's touch base on this one just a little bit although for different reasons than what I went into detail about yesterday.  When you're going to be picking out a new cell phone there's a few things you should consider before you make a final choice; including but not limited to the following.  Do you like the style? Is it comfortable and easy for you to use?

Wait, stop the presses just a second.  I need to interject something completely random which just occurred and never ceases to piss me the fuck off when someone shows this level of stupidity.  When I say "Call customer care at (phone number)." Your next question should never, ever, ever be "What is the phone number?"  It's not like I just read it aloud and you didn't hear all the numbers, it's literally on the screen in front of you.  Pull your head out of your ass and try using the brain between your ears!  Argh!  Frustrating!

Back to our regularly scheduled rant here...Is this a phone that wows you when you pick it up? Do you see yourself using it for a full 2 years? Is it easy to read and send messages?  These are just a few of the things you should look into, and if you have a provider like the one I work for that gives you a 30 day trial with the phone that's even better as that will let you take the phone for a test-drive of your own personal usage over the course of a few weeks.  This will help you avoid looking like a moron when you come ranting to someone who couldn't care less about how you have such a shitty phone and you absolutely hate it, but you bought it three months ago.  I find it hard to believe that you didn't realize you hated it within a week, let alone taking 3 months to get your lazy ass to do something about it.  Try being a bit more proactive in the future and these sort of things won't happen to you.

The last subject that I want to touch on today is "insider knowledge" and advanced information about release dates.  Let me be very blunt with this one and just go on record as saying we really don't know.  Honestly, it's just as big a secret to us as to when phones are being released although we occasionally get one week notice. Even when we know, unless there's a marketing campaign announcing it we still usually can't tell you though.  Any time you visit a store, or talk to anyone in cell phone sales and ask about an iPhone 5 and get told "Later this year" consider that a steaming crock of shit answer.  Here's the real answer as far as that goes: There has been no official announcement from Apple about making a new iPhone model.  This isn't surprising because Apple is a very secretive company when it comes to new device announcements.  Does this mean I don't think there's a chance there will be an iPhone 5? Of course not, there will be one as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, but don't ask me for a release date 'cause you're just going to have to be as patient as the rest of us.

Here's my little sum-up in 3 sentences or less of everything in-case you're a tl;dr type of person.  Have an idea of what you're talking about before you start acting like you know, put some thought into how you expect a phone to last the full duration of your service agreement, and don't think that sales people are withholding crucial information about release dates just to spite you.  We're real people too you know.

Rob out.

Holy No Updates! Time to fix that, and why I hate customer service/sales

Well, well, well.  It's been a rather long time since I've written anything here, and if for no other reason than I found I was going to just keep running around in circles.  It seems that no matter how high the level of stupidity gets, it boils down to the same type of problems people have day in and day out.  I think I have some new topics for people to cover today though so with that being said, let's jump right in!

To begin with today I want to speak about customers who are gullible.  I don't mean like 'The sky is blue because that's the color of God's eyes' sort of gullible, I'm talking about the 'Hey, if you say orange it sounds like gullible' kind of gullible.  The reason I bring this up is because day in and day out I get customers who excitedly tell me that they've been sent a special one time offer to sign up for cell phone service, and, omg guys, they get two FREE phones! It's like no one in the history of cell phones has ever gotten a free phone before!  Anyway, needless to say they get a little upset when it turns out that they have shit credit and they need to pay a massive deposit (Not my fault, nor my problem buddy, take it out on your own lack of ability to pay your bills on time). Now the thing about this is that I get tons of people every day who are dead set on getting the free phone they were offered, and two of them at that.  Well, not only does the phone you were offered suck, but you're a lonely person who has no friends and no one to give a second phone to.  Why do you want to pay for two?  Whatever, that's cool, I can get behind that but just remember that I'm not the person to complain to when you decide that paying $150 per month for two phones is way out of your $100 per month budget for a phone.  Oh right, you can't afford it regardless since those "free" phones are going to cost you a lot more for your deposit you're gonna have to pay.  While it seems that I'm just rambling on here I can assure you there's a point to this; What's my point you ask? Well that's simple.  Do a little shopping and find something that's going to work for you for the next two years, and do keep in mind that it's two years, not two months.

On to the next one!  Contracts!  Before I go into any real detail about this I need to explain exactly what a contract is (it appears no customers has any clue what a 'contract' entails).

con·tract

   [n., adj., and usually for v. 15–17, 21, 22 kon-trakt; otherwise v. kuhn-trakt]  Show IPA

noun

1.

an agreement between two or more parties for the doing ornot doing of something specified.

2.

an agreement enforceable by law.

Now the reason why that needed to cleared up is because I swear 90% of the customers I speak to on a current daily basis have absolutely no clue what it means.  I get it left right and center daily "I've been an AT&T wireless customer for 20 years!  This is bullshit that I bought a phone 10 months ago and I sat my fat ass on it and broke it and now you want to charge me full price for a new one!"  Let's see if I can break this down a bit and answer every bit of this for you.  First things first, you originally agreed to pay the advertised price for the phone which was heavily discounted based on the agreement that you will continue service for a full 2 years (it's actually only 18 months before you can upgrade).  If you don't want this 2 year contract you can go ahead and pay full price for the phone.  What's that? $649 for an iPhone is robbery? No, that's how much it costs before we subsidize the cost into your monthly bill....Anyway, you should probably note that 'Crushed by fat ass' doesn't get covered under your warranty and maybe you should be a bit more careful with that expensive piece of technology you keep with you at all times.  Or get insurance, which is completely up to you.  Don't get me wrong here people, I understand.  More than you believe I absolutely understand.  I hate my cell phone, I don't want it anymore, but I also understand that when I want to switch to a new one less than half way through my contract it's going to cost an arm and a leg to do so which is why I haven't yet, and won't be for awhile.  Don't worry, if it makes phone calls your phone still does what it's meant to do!

Now I'm starting to notice that this seems like I'm just sort of rambling and need to start paying some half-assed attention to my dipshit customers (Yes I do this at work) so I have just one more topic to cover today and that will be all.  While I was chatting with my customers I forgot what the original plan was though so we're going to cover lying instead.  I don't understand, but why must you feel the need to constantly lie about everything?  This doesn't cover most customers, but there's some which just seem either confused (How do I internetz?!) or just outright evasive when it comes to trying to help them.  It's the little things though, like when I'm doing everything in my power to help them and they're doing everything in their power to ignore everything I say.  If you don't want to talk to me, just close the chat.  If I could do it to you I would do so happily when you're wasting my time, but I can't otherwise I lose my job.  You really have no reason to lie to me though about what items are in your cart, or what page of the web site you're on.  I can see both, but only tell you that I can't so you don't flip out that I'm stealing your computer secrets.  Really you're just best off being upfront with me so I can do my best to help you as quickly and efficiently as possible and we can end this painful 20 minutes we had to spend together where you kicked and screamed all the way through the purchase of the perfect cell phone for you.  You'll thank me for it later.

Now that's been the long version, here's the super speed version if you really need it; Don't believe every offer you receive in your e-mail inbox, don't argue that you should be able to break a legally binding contract because you've been a customer for a few years, and don't lie to the person trying to help you.  Wow, that was so much easier. Either way, until next time Internet, keep your head on your shoulders and out of your ass.

Cheers,

Rob.

p.s. next week we'll talk about cell phone longevity and the right phone choice for you (ps, an iPhone 3GS is about as bad a phone choice as it gets)