upgrade

/ Don

AT&T Next Hustle

AT&T Hustle

This past weekend, on a trip to see my girlfriend’s family for Father’s Day, my phone was stolen. Or lost, perhaps. I really don’t know how it came to be out of my possession, but it really doesn’t change the fact that I was without a phone. In truth, I’d planned on upgrading my Apple iPhone 5, anyway, as I’d been out of contract for a few months. However, despite the manufacturer’s planned obsolescence and my excitement for new-fangled gadgetry, I still couldn’t see myself upgrading unless I absolutely needed to. I despise contributing to the e-waste problem and conspicuous consumption and teetered on the fence between keeping the phone and turning it in to AT&T for a paltry exchange payment. Read more

/ Don

Verizon’s $30 “Upgrade” Fee

The following is a post from a friend that I thought was interesting enough to add to the blog. As I don’t have a category for bad business practices (despite such posts as:  Don’t Upgrade Quickbooks, Overdue Casualties of the Recession, Free, Online, Too,  Free, Online, Adventures in Small Business Banking, A Representative will be with You Shortly, Network Solutions is Utter Garbage, Guaranteed Value vs. Value Assessments (or MyPanera vs. My Starbucks Rewards), Sears v. NJCEP v. PSE&G v. Sears (again), Goodbye Windows Mobile, etc.), I’ll settle will categorizing this post under Rants. However, consider Verizon added to my Bad Businesses List.

Hello,

I just wanted to share my recent discussion with a Verizon representative over the chat feature. I felt like I was in the land of Orwell’s double speak. My mother-in-law’s phone isn’t working and I needed to replace it. Our free phone every two years option was not used since we don’t use all of the bells and whistles and we like saving the new phone for when we actually needed a phone. So I went to check out my “free” phone and saw an “upgrade fee” of $30 dollars.

Confused with the charge on my free phone I opened a chat window and chatted with the nice Verizon representative. Here is a copy and paste of the conversation:

Read more