It's a long and painful story of idiocy and incompetence of the second (or first?) biggest company in the world, of course living in a country full of mediocre lazy people who are only trying to fuck you over is not a plus either.
So I'm their customer for like 5 years now, paying for their incredibly overpriced services.
This means a USB modem for my laptop plus a monthly fee that covers some prepaid minutes and sms and so on.
First thing I hate about them is they're charging you to death if you call / use your phone abroad, so I always get me a local phone number when I'm in US or Germany or anywhere abroad.
They charge you like $ 1,50 a minute and I'm not gonna pay anyone $ 1,50 a minute for a one minute of silly conversation over the phone.
Sorry, I'm not - this is simple economy, you would not even pay a hooker here $ 1.50 for a minute of sex if you do the maths, so why pay it to a phone company when I'm travelling a lot and it would actually be a vital part of my bills.
And I never even got a sponsored mobile, since I use the same reliable good old cell phone since 2003 and there is nothing in this world that would ever make me need or want completely worthless things like a camera or those magical things that I can't even spell like bluetooth etc.
I really only use calling, texting, the calendar, alarm and sometimes a calculator for exchange rates, so if we went back to 1999 I would be completely happy as phones were even more durable and the battery lasted for a week.
But now, my cell phone is over it's zenith already - It's going to be dead soon and I also need wi fi so I can get online if there would be anything urgent and I was in a modern gay bar with wi fi or something.
So I want the new fancy Nokia E71 (I even learned the type number already) it's quite handy and a good friend of mine who's an American living in Prague and does some journalism recommended it to me, this is how it looks like, it's a metal piece of junk:
I'm checking the prices for my monthly plan and holy shit they want to give me a SPONSORED price of 300 USD!
Ok, it's a piece of junk made in China that costs them 10 USD including shipping, why should I pay this when I pay them regular money for the past 5 years? I never even got any sponsored phone from them as I was using the same one for the past 6 years.
Plus I have an offer from T Mobile and they give this cell phone to me if I sign with them for a year.
This is very logical from the side of T Mobile because they get
a) more market share
b) some, very minor, additional income as I won't stop calling anytime soon and I really don't plan to limit my phone use
c) their competition gets a bad reference that I will massively spread around, like here and I will make more people behave like me
So T-Mobile is doing the right thing, although they are also expensive like crazy and their services will suck the same, I'll at least get a new phone and a new more convenient plan for the same monthly fee.
But as far as I'm fair I'm giving Vodafone a chance for a counterstrike.
I call there, going through their automatic call system hell and after 10 minutes if intense virtual madness I finally get an operator on the line and get promised that someone from their customer department will call me.
This chick is finally calling me today and I tell her all my valid and logical arguments and I'm really hard on her and I go straight to the point.
She is like - "the biggest discount we can give you is a price of 200 USD"
For Christ's sake are you burglars or just idiots?
Holy shit they want to loose a customer that pays them annualy roughly around $ 1600 to save 200 $ on a piece of junk from China?
I told her, ok I like you, you have a sexy voice, if you give me the phone for 50 USD I'll stay with you, cause it's no hassle with transfering the number and so on.
She says NO.
I say ok, the most I'll pay is $ 100, that's my last word.
She says NO!
Who the hell is running this joint?
Are they out of their mind?
Socialistic idiots who are too lazy to think and didn't realized it's not 1988 anymore!
I'm cancelling the contract next month.
Have you ever experienced something like this? I did not.