Huffman Coding

Because I know the life of my readership is so incomplete without hearing about my hassles with rebates, I though I’d post my sixth message on the topic.

When I last prodded Sprint PCS about my cell phone rebate, they promised that they would mail me the $150 rebate within 30 days. Since that was more than 30 days ago, I e-mailed them again. It has like pulling teeth with them. They now tell me that I should wait another 20 days. We are approaching 60 days total without reimbursement.

Speaking of that 60 days, one of the conditions of getting the phone rebate was that I had to sign up for their useless and overpriced “Vision” web package. This wasn’t a problem because they only required that I sign up for it (there was no minimum contract length) and it was free to try for the first two months. As I expected, I barely used the service: I think I looked up a movie time once at a restaurant because I was too lazy to go to the car and grab the newspaper. So with my free period coming to an end, I called to cancel it.

Canceling was pretty painless, but right after the customer service guy did what I asked, he offered me the roadside assistance package instead free for two months for being a good customer. When I asked him whether this would be another service I would have to remember to cancel within 60 days, he fessed up and admitted I would have to. I pulled the plug right then and there on the temporarily free add ons. (Besides, I have roadside assistance through my car manufacturer and my wife has AAA. The former is free and the latter is cheaper than Sprint’s package.)

I’m sure Sprint does this so they can make a mint off of customers who are too lazy or unsuspecting to call up and cancel. I think it is sad that a customer has to stay on top the relationship with a utility company to avoid getting taken.

After I switched from SBC to Vonage for my landline phone service, I immediately started getting flyers from SBC for cheaper phone service if I switched back. Perhaps if I had been offered these rates (still more expensive than Vonage) earlier then I might not have left them. But again, why bother charging all your customers the same fair rate when you can make a mint by charging your unsuspecting customers more.

And now the SBC telemarketers are calling in an attempt to get me back. They are using up my monthly Vonage minutes in the process. It is a winning combination: charge more for your service and annoy me when I leave.

Much to my chagrin, Chris cancelled cable service two months ago. Bye, bye Daily Show. (We still have broadband, thank $DEITY.) When she called in March, the Time Warner customer service guy offered to lower our bill by $9 a month if she kept cable. While that would have tempted me, it was no dice with Chris. (We now have only five broadcast network channels, three of them staticky.)

Yet another case of charging the customer extra until he’s onto you.