Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Red vs. Blue: The Phone Company

Payment processors: I got another call from my T-mobile representatives today, asking for a payment on my phone bill. I gave her the card number and she charged $80; I could have a G-one phone for that price every month... instead she said she'd apply the payment to my FlexAccount.

What she said next intrigued me: make sure you call tonight or tomorrow to make the payment.

Didn't I just make the payment? I guess she would have responded like this:

"No, you just put some money in the account. The payment is a variable amount, based on some combinator on the services you've asked for, the services you've received, and the numbers we gave you when you signed up for the account. The number that's deducted from your coffers every month should be a flat fee, and it shouldn't be too high. If you've got $140 in your flex account and you're using less than 300 minutes every month, it's not going to be $70.

"$73.83 is just a number I threw out to get us started."

Whoa. That's heavy shit. Sidekick Unlimited plan at $19.99 plus Individual Basic with FlexPay for $29.99 is just shy of $50. I asked for the Individual Basic plan with 300 whenever minutes, and I think I should have it. I don't use more than 300 minutes on my phone during prime-time. I've got other phones that don't charge me $0.15+ every minute past my allowance. Some of these phones don't even maintain an allowance!

The last few months I've been paying for 600 whenever minutes, in spite of my demands. Do you know we don't even get rollover? So here's what she did for me: she took some money off my credit allowance with Capital One, and she put it into my FlexAccount. Actually, she put a note into a message queue, and that payment will be finally processed when they get to it.

Meanwhile, I'm going to talk to someone else with the right to refresh my account, and they're going to listen when I say, "There ought to be enough in my FlexAccount to cover the amount due for my monthly payment. Now, can we see how much that is supposed to be?"

She's not from FlexPay team. She represents me, with T-mobile. The distinction is quite fine.

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