I'm on the Highway to (Phone) Hell...

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I won't give a full breakdown of my billing, but I have 6 lines on my account on an unlimited plan, 4 of which are monthly instalment plans. A quick bit of math on that will lead you to $300 pretty easily.

We get discounts on the plans and accessories at <Red Checkmark> but NOT the phones. We got to pay full price for them just like everyone else.

[Racket_Man]

What do you mean you can't locate my phone?

I mean I CAN'T FIND YOUR PHONE. Look, I'm just a $15/hr phone jockey and this is real life, not CSI. I don't have some magical way to instantly pinpoint the location of your device (and presumably the person using it) to within 10 feet. That is NOT how this works. Either use your OWN locating apps or if it's serious enough: CALL THE COPS!

AND if they did have one of those self-locater apps there is a chance that for whatever reason it would default to some house several states away and be wildly inaccurate. true story a few years ago there were a couple of locator apps that defaulted to some specific house in the middle of the US and the owners got literally mobbed by people who thought their phone was there, law enforcement tracking whatever, people looking/searching for a lost/missing someone. I believe the owners did sue the companies and got things changed.

[Mr Hero]

I might as well go ahead and ask. Say someone needs to cut costs and needs to reduce their monthly bill Do options exist if they politely call and ask what's possible in order to lower their monthly bill?

[earl colby pottinger]

Internet plan

Related to this thread, people running a business with home use internet plans screaming about how much money they are every hour losing each hour the internet is down but somehow can not pay the costs of a business plan.

PS: Not that I seen the standard home internet go down a lot.

[Jetfire]

I might as well go ahead and ask. Say someone needs to cut costs and needs to reduce their monthly bill Do options exist if they politely call and ask what's possible in order to lower their monthly bill?

Not in the biz, but generally speaking, if you are polite about it, it never hurts to ask.

Most of the time, companies want to keep your business; so if you are polite and say "I just can't pay at these rates; what can be done?" then a good phone jockey will probably work with you and try to find you options. They may not always succeed; but they'll try for you. A good, experienced agent will probably be able to tell fairly quick the differences between the legit hardluck cases and the "Gimmy more" cases; and can try to help the first cases more if they can too.

Now if you call up and say "I want unlimited everything for No Dollars a month and I'm not hanging up until I get it," then you likely aren't going to get a thing, no matter what.

[Shyla]

For every customer threatening to leave you, another one is threatening to leave their company and come to you. It's basically the same pool that shifts around.

[dalesys]

Sure you don't mean ...

... It's basically the same pool that shifts around.

[JustShootMe]

I feel you Crazed. I had a lady who had two accounts. After sweating blood & bullets to do the math, I figured out that if they had been on the same account, as she claimed she had requested, she would have saved $130-plus, that I was more than willing to credit her. When I detailed this to her, she asked for MORE credit for fees she felt she shouldn't have had to pay to get the service started. I told my sup I gave her the Sun, the moon & the stars & she wanted the wind, too. When she escalated, she never got the original credits, never mind the extra she wanted.

[wordgirl]

I just signed up with Red Checkmark and while it was a bit rocky at first, there were a couple of real superstars who got everything untangled for me.

Once I established that I wasn't gonna scream at them, they were super-nice despite the fact that 1) I bought my phone off eBay (I've found this to be an extremely viable alternative) and 2) I'm on a plan that's a pretty screamin' deal on its own. I just basically pretended that everybody I talked to was potentially CrazedClerk (And I really don't get these people who whine they didn't know how much data they were using. You basically have to push A SINGLE ICON on your phone to find out how much you have left. Seriously, my 7-year-old nephew can figure this out.)

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I might as well go ahead and ask. Say someone needs to cut costs and needs to reduce their monthly bill Do options exist if they politely call and ask what's possible in order to lower their monthly bill?

Yes, absolutely!

Oftentimes customers are unware of newer plans that can save them money because they've just stuck with their old one and haven't been aware of newer offers. Additionally some people are on a plan that is too big for their needs. If you're only using 8 GB a month on a 16GB plan, there's little point in paying for all that extra data.

There could also be features and services on your bill you're still paying for that could be removed. For example, we offer one service that's $5/month. A lot of people sign up and forget that they did because $5 doesn't make a lot of difference in a bill total. Of course, when you add up $5/month over several months you can see the waste of money.

I can't speak for everyone who works the phones, but if you're nice to me, I will do everything I can to save you money.

[Minflick]

Manners. Manners are SO useful! They are the grease that lubes everyday transactions!

[apocolypse101]

I'm sometimes glad that I have a older cell phone (link to pic, it was my dad's old one) and when he gave it to me, we had the SIM card removed. It's not really that big of a deal, since on that old of a phone, the browser is super hard to read and I only really need it to call and text on anyways.

About those scams you posted pictures of, USE PROPER GRAMMAR AND SPELLING!!! It's "13 Viruses" not (13)virus! Also, why specify PORN sites? How would an antivirus program delineate between a site that has porn content versus one with anything else?

It amazes me how stupid/ignorant/unperceptive people are.

[Jetfire]

I've heard tell (it may even have been mentioned earlier in this thread; I'm pretty sure I saw it mentioned on this site in a thread somewhere somewhat recently), that the bad grammar in those spam/phishing emails is intentional.

Most people will see the bad grammar/bad spelling, and just delete it outright without responding to it. They're the people the scammers don't want anyway, because those people will probably be attentive enough to not fall for the scam anyway.

The people that tend not to pick up on the bad Engrish in the scam letters, are also the ones that are easier to fool and easier to victimize by the scammers. They may be elderly people who are not as technologically adept, or non-english speakers who pick up on a few words they do know, maybe keywords they know are important to react to, but not alert enough to pick up the context to know it's bad news. So those people respond to the email and get hooked by the scam.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

^^I've been trying to train my parents to look at the spelling and grammar on those things, and delete them just for the mistakes. Otherwise they're the kind of computer not-savvy who would think something really was wrong with their computer and download malware or expose their personal information to criminals.

As to where these pop-ups are coming from--I think they can come from any website that uses ads. I know I've seen them on a couple sites (NOT porn sites BTW) and downloaded an ad blocker. Now when I go to one of those sites I get a guilt trip about "we are a small business and these ads pay our bills."

FOH. Either weed out these bad guys and their ads or accept people are going to use ad blockers.

[RealUnimportant]

They specify they're from porn sites to try and shame people into believing the bullshit. Funnily enough, Porn sites are far less likely to be vectors for digital infection in the way that a working girl will be less likely than the girl next door to give you the clap; they put extra effort into ensuring your experience is trouble-free because it directly affects their bottom (heh) line.