New Phones and Old Phobias

I've been using a trac fone for a while now, and I've never, ever been happy with the company -- mostly due to customer service (customer disservice) over one issue: I never, in about four years of paid service, had a voice mail...or for that matter caller i.d.

I spent two separate very long sessions with the outsourced (and undertrained) customer service people -- all very nice, very polite folk -- who had absolutely no idea how to actually resolve my missing voice mail problem. Finally, after the second lengthy attempt, I just gave up, and had a phone with no voice mail, no caller i.d., and no way to know from where the untold number of calls I missed came.

My guy and I have discussed getting new cell phones since he graduated and agreed that once he was settled into his full-time job, we'd begin looking in earnest. We've shopped around, compared companies and plans, asked around our collective pool of friends and family and let it all stew for a bit. For about 5 months, actually. That's a pretty tasty stew.

Well, this past week, we finally made our decision, signed on for a family share cell plan and bought three phones. (My youngest gets one when she enters Jr. High, just like big sis. A fact, I might add, that is causing a little bit of drama around the house right now.) My husband got a mac-daddy, tricked out SmartPhone, chock full of high tech goodness and my oldest and I each got LG Scoops -- hers is turquoise and mine is orange.

My guy gets his phone out and starts off with a bang, making calls, zipping around checking out his new toy, and I'm kind of timidly poking and prodding mine a little bit and my oldest thoroughly has hers mastered in about 20 minutes. The only thing I was really concerned about was getting my (finally!) voice mail set up. After I saw, or rather heard, my oldest speak her greeting into her phone, I think, "Oh, yeah -- I wanna get that up and running." So I grab my phone and start hunting and pecking around to find how to get my greeting on mine.

Guess what? My new phone...the one I was waiting for so I could finally have voice mail... Doesn't have voice mail.

You know... I don't care for the bells and whistles. I mean, I don't want a JitterBug, or anything but, criminy -- Just let me place phone calls, and in turn, have some way to freaking identify the callers I miss!!!! I don't need live streaming video feed with an mp3 player and games and whatever else the "latest" cool phones have!!! Just give me my dang VOICE MAIL, please. (Although...my new phone is mp3-ready...and I'm kind of excited about that!)

Grrrr. I was burning, man. My husband -- who is my a-number-one, go-to guy -- starts messing with my phone, and when he can get no further on his own, starts scouting the internet for solutions. He exhausts that avenue, and then spends about 40 minutes on online tech support, chatting with someone about my problem...then he calls a number the chat tech gives him and spends another like, 45 minutes on the phone with that tech person and after about two-and-a-half hours Voila! I have my voice mail!!! (He's the BEST!)

So... now I want ringtones, dude. And like, mp3's... and maybe a couple of kewl games; like can you get Halo on your cell? And how about web browsing... because I need to surf at all possible times...

Oi. Maybe it isn't too late to check out one of those JitterBugs....