How i bought a cell phone

OK. So we’ll start with the important developments in my life… After heavy and management consulting intensive search, I’ve selected myself a new cell phone… Its shiny, nice and has a 2 megapixel camera… and only cost me $50 bucks after a $50 rebate and signing my life away to Verizon for another 2 years… so far it looks like a good deal… the graphics on the phone are very colourful… almost like a real tv… the keypad is real futuristic looking, though my slimy fingers keep on sliding all over it… but hey.. who needs to dial the right number as long as you look cool…

and oh yes… yesterday I began my next important mobile project – finding just the right ring tone for my new machine… never mind that I am likely to keep the thing on vibrate at all times… so I dug through the phone, got myself connected to UniVision mobile website… which turned out to be in Spanish… tried to download some hot latin beats…. Namely Eminem… only to realize that they wanted to charge me something like three bucks for the privilege… without a second of hesitation, my bargain nose clearly told me that this was a rip off, I went to two other ‘free’ mobile sites touted by my beloved Verizon phone… lo and behold… while accessing the actual website is apparently free (I’ll find out on my next bill I guess)… downloading the advertised ‘free’ ringtones was decidedly un-free…

and this brings me to my next raving rant… the little rip offs in life we all have to deal with… ill stick with the mobile thematica here… so while purchasing the afore mentioned slick new phone – LG VX8700 to be perfectly exact…. At the Union Square Verizon store… I was being helped by an Indian saleskid – so good was he that I even remember his name – Manesh…. Or is it Mahesh? Anyway, lets go on, who cares…

So there I am, booking the purchase of the new phone with Mashish… a fine upstanding young man of maybe 18 he is… with a lightly protruding mustache awaiting its first bloody shave… and a fresh Verizon employee uniform that some marketing buffoons at headquarters spent six and a half months and half a mil drawing up… ‘the colors of the uniform will encourage more accessory purchasing, mr. Verizon CEO, sir…’ was what they said at headquarters… instead they got a bunch of little greedy monkeys running around their stores, looking like half literate gas station attendants trying to pawn off god knows what crap on us, unsuspecting consumers….

So anyway, back to Mashish and me… there he is, booking my purchase of the phone/ two year soul sale into the system… all is fine and well and I am even excited for the 2 megapixel camera will truly allow my ‘photographic talent’ to shine and explode… allowing to explore the nether reaches of my existential existence and prune out the liberating truth behind it… OK… sorry… that’s just the non-sense stuck in my head from the last photo show I attended… fuck them, art overbred maggots….

Anyway, mashish is there booking me into his system with a lazy tune of a teenage salesman… about two minutes into the procedure, he scans something over on the screen and announces that I do a lot of texting… and that I don’t have a texting package… and since I do around 90 texts a month… I should get a $10 monthly texting package…

Now that’s where an uneducated consumer – i.e. one who has not spent forty thousand pounds on his MBA – just nods his head and gets his face ripped off by this teenage criminal… but no… because Mehesh was a young man, he didn’t realize that not only did he need to make a generally vague financial proposition to someone like me… but he also needed to appeal to my vanity… say by complimenting the number of friends who must care deeply about me for 90 texts really is a lot…never mind the truth – half are to my mother reporting on my whereabouts… but my vanity would be pleased… I’d feel like a wholesome member of society and gladly fork over the $10 monthly fixed charge…

Instead he let me think… and I did the math… and asked the right question – i.e. how much is each text… Normal text = .15… picture text = .25… I never picture text…. So effectively I spend $13 bucks texting on average…

“and how many texts do I get for $10 bucks?” – 2000 or way too many…

“And how many texts was my minimum in the last four months?” – fifty two, this past month…

“and oh shit, is there a cheaper plan?” – why yes, for $5 bucks I get 250 texts for free….

And there we go Mahesh… you sell me the cheaper plan instead of the one where you earn an extra 20 cents a month or whatever your commission is on this….

And I am going to stop now… but what I didn’t mention was the thousand and one accessories that they tried to hang upon my already burdened neck… including a lovely cell phone case… headphones… god knows what else… for you know what… they make these freaking things so they are not compatible with anything else and the headphones you have, the USB port you already use… none of it connects with any of this new crap you bought… and you know why… so big capitalists somewhere in Korea… or maybe even in our very own Verizon store in Union Square, can make a few extra dollars off your lazy, inattentive American ass….