Loyalty pays, baby!

I just had a beautiful conversation with my cellular phone representative.

I've been a customer with this company for over 4 years now. All that time I've never changed my cellular plan, just kept going on with the hardware upgrades.

And now I'm so glad I've done so. I mean, sure, all the other cellular companies out there are very seductive and I'll admit, everytime my contract is up I find myself contemplating switching over to another company...lured by their promises of more minutes at cheaper rates and blah blah blah. But I've stood by my company's side, and at this point where you pay extra for this and extra for that there is no way I'd ever switch now. I've been "committed" too long.

I remember shopping with Daisy for a new cellular for her. There were ridiculous extra fees for call waiting, call forwarding, call display. Ludicrous! All of those things are included on my plan 'cuz it's so old. I may not use call forwarding or call waiting very much, but call display is a godsend and I'm grateful I don't have to pay extra for that.

Then there's the insanity of paying an extra fee for "detailed billing." What is up with that? 3 dollars a month just so you can have a paper record of all the calls you've made (and for the peace of mind that your cellular company isn't ripping you off). Why should I have to pay for the company's transcript of how it's charging me whatever it's charging me? Yet again, I am grateful that I don't have to deal with that "extra fee" pain in the ass.

Then there was aqua_angel's past laments over how this company (which is the same as mine, but she joined up later so she had all those "extra" bits to deal with) doesn't bill by the second. That's a legitimate gripe. This company charges you for the first minute no matter if the call only lasts 15 seconds and the per-second billing doesn't kick in until after one minute of airtime. Given the situation that she was in earlier with no landline I can see where that would rack up pretty high for her. For me though, it's presently a non-issue. Even if I made 100 15-30 second calls that month I'd still be under my "quota." For my own comparison I break it down into calls I can make by the day. My old-school plan allows me 100 minutes on weekdays, 250 on the weekends (and I know that's measly compared to most plans these days, but it's really all I need). I can "budget" that into an average of 5 calls or 5 minutes a day from Monday to Friday and 30 calls or 30 minutes a day on Friday night or Saturday and Sunday. I've never come even close to maxing out my airtime. But that's just me and my needs.

Civic has a corporate deal on his account (through a different company) and he gets per-second billing as a result when the rest of the "normal" customers get the same deal my company offers. I think the only company out here that offers per-second billing is the Woofy company...and from friends' past experiences with Woofy I'm staying clear away 'cuz I'm not very impressed with it. Per-second billing wouldn't be worth the hassle of dealing with them and their reception issues.

Anyway, what brought on this whole post was the fact that I just found out I never had to worry about that whole "pay for the first minute" business. That's right! The old school plan gives me per-second billing! Although I swear that's not how it used to be billed when I started with them, but shhhhh, noone need know.

I love my cellular plan. I <3 my cellular company. And I'm really digging my new phone. It's not as stellar as my old Ericsson, but it's spades better than that blasted Nokia. And cuter to boot!

If I stick by them for the rest of my cellular-using life I don't think anything could ever pull me away from them based on all those extra fees they keep tacking on these days on the new plans. Just by shopping alround for comparison it looks like I'm saving at least 15 dollars a month easily based on all my included goodies on my plan.

Happy money day to me!