The week before Ruth and I left for Florida I was having trouble with my cell phone. It wasn’t a first for me. I’ve had trouble before. Several years ago I had service with the S company and wasn’t receiving my voicemail messages. I knew that people were leaving them for me because I started receiving texts from the same people telling me to listen to my voicemail.
In any case I stopped into my local S store and asked for help. A very personable young woman took my phone, pushed a couple of buttons, and wallah everything worked.
She asked if she could help me any further and I said “yes”. “I’m not hitting on you (and I wasn’t), but it would be great if I could meet with you once a week for lunch. I’ll buy. You can teach me new things about my phone. As you can see, I’m technically challenged.” She smiled, but declined my offer.
My most recent cell phone trouble is with the V company. Ruth and I switched a few years ago because we found the coverage more reliable. We’re happy with the service, but as I said, I recently had trouble and sought their help.
Ruth and I share a four gig plan. We have unlimited calls and texts, but our data usage is limited to four gigs. This has always been plenty. Some months we “carried over” data to the next. The last few weeks of our time in Michigan, Ruth was doing a lot of “searching” on her phone as we drove in the car. She searches for stuff. Places to visit. Things to buy. Rental and admission fees. You get the picture.
In any case a few days prior to the end of our billing cycle we both received a text telling us that we were about to exceed our allotted four gigs. I asked Ruth to curtail her usage, but she didn’t curtail enough. A day later we received another warning. This time I authorized an additional two gigs of data to get us through the month. Shortly after I received a bill and discovered that I was being billed an additional fee for the two gigs that I purchased for the past month and two more gigs moving forward.
I stopped in at the local V office and asked about my bill. He explained the addition and made an alteration to my account. And then he said, “You know you could save some money by going to our unlimited data plan.”
“How would that work?”, I asked.
“Well, right now you are paying $120.00 to share four gigs and you could share an unlimited plan for $80.00.”
I’m not a mathematician but I know that unlimited is more than four. “What do I need to do?”, I asked.
“Just tell me you want it”
“I want it.”
After a couple of finger flicks on his tablet, it was done. I asked why I wasn’t informed of this before. “Why doesn’t the company tell you how to save?”
“We’d have to hire another set of employees to contact everyone and that would be expensive.”
“”Yes, or you could just give everyone the best plan all of the time.”
I received my first new bill today and it is indeed $40.00 less for an unlimited amount of more.
The entire cell phone, better deal, experience took me back to a time when I was still a superintendent trying to reduce costs for the district. We were going through utility deregulation and had the opportunity to purchase gas from other sources. C-E owned the pipes but not all of the gas. We could buy gas from anyone and just pay C-E for our usage of their pipeline.
The area superintendents met with an official of C-E to discuss this and our options moving forward. The C-E executive explained pricing procedures and everything that impacts what people pay.
One of the things I learned was that there was a price for “residential” users and a lower price for “business users”. (They buy more so they get a discount.) One of my fellow superintendents, Jim, asked what plan the school districts were on.
“I don’t know but if you ask me I will have your rates evaluated and reduced if you qualify. We like to help our friends.”
That’s when I interrupted the conversation. “If you are our “friend”, why do we have to ask you? I help my friends just because they are my friends. That’s what friends do.”
She didn’t have a great response. She knew, I knew, heck we all knew, that friendship had nothing to do with it. Business is business no matter if you are selling utilities like gas and electricity or cell phone service.
Businesses want to increase profits and consumers want to pay as little as possible. It’s not a perfect system, but it works for most of us most of the time.