I took a stroll through Best Buy on a recent Saturday. Nothing really in mind. Just there to look at the merchandise. Since I had not been in for awhile, I stopped to glance at the new phones available from Sprint, with whom we have service. As I looked at tiny phones with buttons meant for gnomes, I marveled that this is one thing where a guy thinks that smaller is better. I looked at the phones with color screens and the ability to do email and download from the web. Interesting idea, but you would need to have much younger eyes than I have to be able to read anything. And do I really need to pay an additional $20 or more per month to be able to download new games to play on the phone, new ringer tones to annoy those near me, or (be still my heart) a new screen saver for the itty bitty color screen?
Next, I picked up the current rates brochure more to see what the new service they were offering costs than anything else. Well, lo and behold, there was a rate in there for double the minutes we have on our current plan and a savings, before tax, of $35 a month. That is 30 percent less than we are paying now.
This plan is for what they call “anytime minutes.” The mobile phone industry has consistently constricted the euphemistically named “night and weekend” minutes so they are not of much use to us at all. But this offer was for double the anytime minutes we have and a savings as well.
You would think that if I went on the Sprint web page and clicked on “change plans” that I could switch to this new, lower-price plan right there. I mean, they do want us to do our business on the web so they can have fewer employees, don’t they? The only plan I could find was not only $10 a month higher than the one in the brochure, but also said the offer expired two weeks before the date I was looking at it. So much for up-to-date web-page management. I logged off my account and looked at the offers as if I were a new customer. Ah, yes, there was the brochure offer.
So, I called the handy-dandy toll-free number and got a voice-recognition computer that asked me what I wanted. I told “her,” and “she” said to wait and I would be connected to a customer service person. I told the customer service guy about the brochure price and he said I was eligible to get that service.
Would I like to have voice dialing free for three months? No, I wouldn’t. Time passes as he enters keystrokes on the computer. He then tells me that the voice dialing feature is free on the second phone. Hmmm. Nothing seemed hidden up his sleeve, but why is it free on the second phone rather on the first? More keystroking.
I told him that I noticed I could have “up to 50 free long-distance minutes per month” on my home phones as part of this new plan. Yep. No monthly fixed fee. Only seven cents a minute after the first 50 minutes free. And you wonder why the telecommunication companies are having problems and their stocks are in free fall. I signed up, with the obligatory third-party verification to prove that I was not being “slammed.”
The moral of this story is that going to Best Buy on a regular basis and checking out the rate sheets can:
a. Save me money.
b. Make me wonder how low rate plans will go and what companies will not survive.
c. Initiate a change in our long-distance company again (this is the third time this year).
d. Start me thinking about where else I am being charged more than I should be.
Addendum: My wife’s phone was broken. We went to the local Best Buy to purchase a new one. We found a model that she liked and bought it. We also bought the service plan which is now a year shorter than it used to be (two instead of three years) and more expensive.
My wife was also looking for a digital camera. So, two days after we had bought the phone, I went into the same Best Buy to look at cameras to suggest to her. Out of curiosity, I looked at Sprint phones as I passed that counter. Who knows what new doodad or model would catch my eye? What I did see was that the phone we had purchased was now $50 less than the price we had paid. So, the following day I brought in my receipt and got a $50 credit. I guess I will have to cruise by that counter every week now to make sure we got the lowest price equipment and the lowest price calling plan.
Later, I bought the digital camera and a Compact Flash memory card. I did it on a day when there was ten percent off. A couple of days later I went back looking for a card reader. Lo and behold, the memory card I had bought was $50 cheaper on a special just that week. Thank goodness I’m retired.
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