I’ve been hearing friends and family complain about dealing with their wireless providers for years, and I’m sure you have too (or maybe you were the complainer?).  This is not uncommon, since many of the policies of cellular providers are unethical and designed to trick you. This post will investigate their incentive structure, and how to turn it around for your benefit.

Some of the more common unethical practices by cellular providers:

- Charging you for a complete minute even if you only used one second.
- Charging you just for reaching a cellphone that was off (since it sends you right to voicemail).
- Charging you for dropped calls.  They do generally provide a number you can call to get those charges dropped, but how many people actually are willing to spend 10 to 15 minutes holding for customer service and then nitpicking about these 5 minutes or those 5 minutes.
- Not disclosing the total charges you will incur due to exorbitant taxes and all sorts of additional services you thought were included in your plan.
- Extorting extensions on your contract from you whenever you need them to help you.
- Taking away your unused minutes at the end of each month (Yes, some providers no longer do this and offer Rollover, purely as a marketing tactic, and even then it expires at a certain date thereafter).

Now, there are three basic models for cellular providers, and you likely know which category your provider falls into:

- The “tons of minutes that you can’t use because of a terrible network” plan.
- The “our network is the best so we’ll charge you a ton and also for everything under the sun”.
- The “we have a decent network, decent value from plans, and offer neat features which are fun (like Push-to-Talk)”.

The one thing all three models have in common is that they need you to stay beyond that first or second year, since they spend so much on marketing and offering the phones for deep discounts.  Furthermore, retention workers at the companies get in trouble if you leave.

As other people have found, dealing with Verizon is like getting your teeth pulled.  Several times I would call with an issue, only to be told that “we can’t do anything about your current bill, we can’t even see it.  We’ll only be able to see it once the bill posts.”  So, naturally, I’d ask to be called back whenever that occurs (they never could tell me when that would be).  And, to my complete expectation, they never once called me back.

The usual way most people deal with situations is to waste a half hour on the phone, on hold, then with the customer service representative, and finally with a manager, who would offer some absurdly small incentive to make you happy.  This was never time efficient, and you didn’t get much out of it (they design their customer service that way to cut down on calls).

My most recent spat with Verizon, with whom I’ve been for quite a few years now, was over a month where I had a business emergency, and instead of using up 900 minutes (my usual plan), ended up using almost 2,000.  The 40 cent per minute overage (totaling $440) was absolutely intolerable, and I decided to call and see if they could change my plan for that month to the 2,000 minute plan (saving me over $400).

At first, Verizon claimed they couldn’t do that.  I then informed them that Cingular, Sprint, and T-Mobile would certainly do that for a good customer.  She then sensed an opportunity to sell me something, and agreed to upgrade my plan if I committed to one more year of contract terms. 

 I found this to be a real slap in the face, hitting someone like that when they had an emergency.  At this point I got angry, and decided to try a different tactic.  I asked for the most senior manager they had in that day, and was told to wait.  When the manager came on the phone, and just repeated what the customer representative had told me.

 I said “Listen, for years I have been your customer, I have gone over my minutes in the past and given you great profits.  What you are trying to do now is absolutely unethical.  When you have a bad month, and my reception isn’t great, I don’t get a refund, or a shorter contract.  So why should you get a longer contract out of me? And why would I want a longer contract with a company that treats their long customers this way? I’ll tell you what.  I’m not even going to waste my time with you.  You either make my plan for this month the 2,000 minute plan and drop me back down the month after or I’m leaving Verizon…I don’t care if I’m still on contract, come find me.  Good day!”

A week later, I called up Verizon to check up some details on my account…and what do you know? They did just as I asked - because I didn’t stay on the phone long enough for the manager to have a chance to do anything other than that.

Lesson learned: At the end of the day, just don’t take no for an answer, and don’t spend a second longer on the phone than you have to in order to explain the consequences of them not playing ethically.

If you have had any similar experiences with cellular companies or know of some other tricks, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!