You know the five second rule, don’t you? Food that lands on the floor and stays there for five seconds (more or less) is fine to pick up and eat. I tried to apply that rule in another setting, but it does not translate. After cleaning the stalls this morning, I filled the dogs’ water bucket, a nice stainless steel one, and carried it out to their pen. Upon setting it down, I heard splash, clunk. Looking down, there was my mobile phone at the bottom of the bucket fully submerged under six inches of water. I quickly snatched it out of there, ran inside and dried it off, but it was giving wacky messages on its LCD.

Time for the emergency room for wet electronics. I got out Marian’s hair dryer, took the phone battery off, dried everything I could, and blew hot air on it until everything that I could see was dry. Well, the triage was to no avail. When turned on, nothing happened at all. When plugged into the charger, it went through several berserk things like wailing, telling me that the phone was out of range, and other not-very-helpful messages all cycling without me doing anything but watching in horror. So, it was toasted, so to speak (drowned?).

Luckily, I had bought a service policy from BestComputerCircuit when I got the sucker a little under three years ago. I gathered up the original box, manual, charger, and the phone and took all of this stuff with my service policy to my local branch of the store. No problemo, they told me. After filling out some paperwork, I was told that I would get credit on any new phone in the amount I had paid on the old phone.

The young woman at the Sprint counter told me that the phone I had originally bought (which I had replaced due to breaking off its antenna about a year or so ago with a totally different phone) cost $200. Boy, howdy. Phone prices have come down, so I could get a goody. Options that met my needs for something that can stand up to barn and outside work meant that there were two choices: $130 or $299. The only difference, really, was the higher-price phone had a color screen. I told her that the $129 one would be fine since I did not want to pay the extra $99 if I bought the other phone.

Now comes the strange part, and it’s all good. I told her I needed a leather case and a car charger. She told me that if one bought two accessories when buying a phone, the cost of the phone was cut in half. Thus, I could get the $299 phone and not pay anything extra. Fine. She also sold me a two-year service plan for $40.

So, I went to the register with her with a $299 phone, service plan $40, car charger $30, and case $25. Got that? I fully expected to pay for all the extra stuff, just get the credit for the phone. Total bill was $34. I didn’t ask for an explanation, just left the store. Love those service plans!

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.

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.

Ah, a new computer with Windows XP aboard. And all that free stuff that comes loaded with it. It’s a glory to behold. Want to make sure that you get automatic Windows updates (to fix their security hole du jour)? No problem.

Wait a minute. There is a little message popping up at the bottom of the right-hand side of my screen. It implores me to sign up for .NET from Microsoft so I can get better service from them and all sorts of other neat stuff. Well, trusting soul that I am (naïve, stupid also), I sign up using the email account that I use for the web (affectionately called my spam account). I make sure to read the privacy statement and that all the boxes that say I want automatic email from them or their “affiliates” are unchecked (or checked, as the case might be to confuse the average bear). I get a confirming email telling me all the virtues of .NET and how to use it.

Within an hour of registering, I start to get a steady stream of spam messages. These are from real or bogus Hotmail accounts (another Microsoft feature). I delete these. I get more each day, numbering about 10 a batch and repeating every couple of hours.

Pretty pissed, I go online and cancel my .NET account, but the proverbial feline has escaped the cloth container. Spam continues unabated for days. Well, I think, time to go on the Internet and contact Microsoft to tell them about this. I try looking at www.microsoft.com and about every link I can see. Ah, here’s a Help section, there’s a Contact Us section. Here’s the joker: there is no way to send them feedback or a message UNLESS you are a .NET or Hotmail client! But that was what got me in trouble in the first place. I dig and I dig and I find nada, bupkis, nothing.

So, I go to my ISP’s website and find out how to complain about spam to them. I follow all the instructions and send them a message. They reply that the emails I have been getting are not from their server and that if I have problems, I should contact the server of the offenders. Now, here is a confusing point: My ISP provider (mail server) says that they screen for spam. So it seems reasonable to me that they would want me to report spam that got through their filter. Hmmm. Guess not.

So, I go to the Hotmail website and find that a non-subscriber can send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with the information. Being a good citizen in the war against Spams of Mass Destruction (this has got to be an Iraqi plot), I send Hotmail an email. They send a generic reply filled with bland advice and warnings, bless their little warped hearts. They say they will get back to me. Yeah, right.

As a final act of revenge, I am going to forward each and every spam email I get with a Hotmail sender to Hotmail’s abuse address. Hope they like them.