Sprint Sucks (and other stuff you already knew)

I get my Sprint cell phone bill today, and it's WAY higher than usual. Further investigation reveals that I have been charged $36 for "upgrading" my phone. Apparently, if your phone is broken, you SHOULD NOT buy a new one to actually use the cell service you pay a monthly bill for. Just sit there twiddling your thumbs.

Naturally, I decided to call Sprint and complain. Usually when making complaints to big companies, I play it cool. Start with the call-center peon, and when they insist they cannot help you, pull the Can-I-Speak-To-A-Supervisor card. But Sprint so repeatedly tries to bend over myself and every other customer it has that I opted instead to launch right into a tirade.

Sprint: How can I help you today?

Me: Well, you charged me $36 for getting a new phone. I'm assuming I was supposed to keep using the broken phone I had so that you could continue robbing me by making me pay for a service I couldn't possibly use with a phone that didn't work. So you can go ahead and tell me how you can't do anything about it, and I'll continue to bend over and take one from Sprint.

Sprint: I can remove the charge from your bill.

Me [in complete shock]: Awesome.

Of course, then she tried to sell me phone internet, text messaging and anything else she could think of, so that it still took 10 minutes on the phone to execute a simple 30-second change.

But the lesson here is an important one: When it comes to corporate America, you can get whatever you want if you complain enough.

Case in point: The other day, in planning an overseas trip, I realized that my credit card limit was not high enough. But the company in question does "automatic" reviews of your limit, upping it whenever they feel like it. To solve this problem, I had to go the get-turned-down-by-the-first-person route, and then go to the supervisor.

The supervisor told me it was absolutely, positively impossible to get an increase in my credit limit outside of the periodic reviews. She urged me to check back in a few months to see if it went up. I explained how that would not help me book my travel plans and then dropped the bombshell: "This lack of customer service makes me wonder why I'm a [credit-card company] customer at all."

She put me on hold and voila! When she returned, she told me the limit increase that she deemed "impossible" a minute earlier was suddenly very doable. And I had double my previous limit.

Suck it, Corporate America!

Flying With The Partially Famous

I was just telling Ogle about how big-time track star and former Tar Heel Marion Jones was on my flight to Miami yesterday. And he said, "You could've been on 'that flight that marion jones was killed on.' What's funny is that I actually considered the very same thing when I was on the plane (hey, a little turbulence will get you thinking).

But now, after Ogle repeated my own thought to me, it seems weird. Is that not a very bizarre thought to have -- to say nothing of the fact that lots of people seem to have it -- at first glimpse of a celebrity on a plane? Sitting there going, Man, if we die, it's gonna be Marion Jones this and Marion Jones that ... -- and not even in a bitter way. It would just seem odd.

I mean, this ain't Valens, Holly and the Big Bopper here. It's one famous chick and 100-some-odd randoms. A plane crash would be big news anyway. But having a celeb on board, even a pseudo-celeb, just adds some sort of element of scandal maybe that titillates the imagination. Or maybe it was the part of the flight when I wasn't allowed to use my iPod and I got bored. Who knows?

All I do know, is I distinctly recall mentioning my iPod in another recent post. All this free publicity for Apple. They should send me a free iPod. Stay tuned, as next time I possibly plug even more products I enjoy and would love to have for free.

A Hungover Ode to Hector's

Last night we should have gone to Hector's. But the line was so long at this fine Chapel Hill late-night eatery that we decided to hit up another classic, Time Out. And while chicken on a biscuit is awesome, I'm having some buyer's remorse this next afternoon because apparently Hector's is going to be closing.

Why you ask? So that the stupid East End Martini Bar can expand skyward. It just isn't right. So in honor of Hector's, here's a short hungover poem I just wrote:

Hector’s is the place to eat a
Cheeseburger upon a pita.
One guy throws it toward the grill,
Landing smoothly – that’s the drill.
Some girls in line are pretty hot,
I think I’ll get some tater tots.
But suddenly it’s got to close
So that martini-drinking hoes
Can have more room to drink their drinks
Various shades of reds and pinks.
I’m anti- the martini cause --
I’d rather have Tzatziki sauce.
So as martini people get their wishes
I’ll say fuck that –- Hector’s bitches!

I Can't Stop Believing This Coincidence

So today, I'm going into the gym with my iPod already plugged into my ears and music playing, in this particular case, Journey's "Don't Stop Believing."

But when I walk in to scan my card, I usually pause the iPod because the girl behind the desk usually makes brief Hey-How-Ya-Doin' small talk. And when I hit pause on the iPod, I still hear "Don't Stop Believing."

Freaked out that Steve Perry has taken over my brain, I freeze up briefly with an alarmed look in my eyes until I realize that the very same song is playing over the gym's speaker system, in roughly the same part of the song I just paused. Upon recovering, I embraced the coincidence with Open Arms and went back to Faithfully enjoying my iPod.