Isabel Walcott Hilborn

Looking forward to mobile alternatives

Milk is the same price per gallon at your grocery store no matter who drinks it.  And there's gotta be a law against charging some people in a neighborhood more than others for their kilowatt-hours.  Has someone started a cell phone carrier yet that just charges everyone the same hourly rate based on how much time they use?  That works with every phone?  Because that would make sense, wouldn't it?

I switched to T-Mobile in December, explained to the guy at the counter how many minutes I used based on my past history, and he got me set up on what looked like it was the right plan for me with the right amount of minutes plus unlimited data and text.  I didn't ask for a document containing proof of the name of which plan I chose with his help, as it didn't occur to me that there would be a discrepancy later (my first mistake). I set up an automatic payment (my second mistake) and trusted T-Mobile (my real mistake).  By trusted, I mean, I didn't check the next month to make sure they were charging me the rate they were supposed to.  I'm not a paranoid person, or at least I wasn't in December. I'm busy, and I reviewed the guy's recommendation, and thought it was all fine.

NOT!

Had a look at my bill the other night and WHOA!  I've been going hundreds of minutes over the monthly allotment every month since I had the new phone!  Wasn't on the right plan at all.

So I called T-Mobile to tell them there must have been some mistake.  They told me the mistake was mine - not checking up on them sooner.  If I had called within 60 days, they could have helped me, but at 90 days, it was my own fault.

Seems so reasonable, right?  Let's think about it. We cheat you, and if you notice right away, we'll say, "OK, we're so busted", and we'll make you whole.  If you don't notice right away though, we'll keep your money.  It's perfectly easy for us to see that there was a mistake - you signed up for a new plan and you're using double the minutes the plan gives you.  We have your phone number and it would be so easy to call you and tell you that there's been a mistake.  But we don't!  We cross our fingers and hope we can just get past the 60 day mark, and then we're home free.  No such thing as satisfaction guaranteed with us!

I asked them then, what it would cost to get unlimited calling.  Well, it turns out that they have a plan where for the same price I was paying for 500 minutes, I can get unlimited minutes.  "We want to save you money", said the call center representative.

Huh!  Is that why you were charging me $.40/minute for hundreds of minutes each month, which obviously should have been coming to me for free (since I now am on a plan that gives me unlimited calls for the same price?)  Do you have ANY costs-of-goods-sold rationale for why my minutes should cost .$40 each?

What a bunch of scammers these cell phone carrier companies are, with their hundreds of complicated different plans and their hidden deadlines and their different prices for minutes depending who's using them and whether you already used some or not.  The pricing's all completely fake anyway.  I'm tired of being jerked around, and everyone else is too. 

What a great opportunity for someone to start a carrier business where a minute is a minute is a minute.  Your real savings would be in the call center staff and billing departments.  Just use an open-source program and have all customer service done over email, which would be ok since there wouldn't be much since your billing is so simple and clean.

Grr.  Really just wanted to make a public statement saying how much T-Mobile sucks.  Telling me it's my own fault for not checking their work - though certainly true - is just proof that they're happy to screw their own customers every chance they get.  There should be a better way.

Just a little shout-out to my peeps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOY9bg3kUAw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTogqJbUSos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eREN9IadtNk&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZWpBnYz35A&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zujZk2CHBA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACXIgD8s78U&NR=1

Write What You Know

I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but I'm disappointed with Ann Patchett's latest book "Run".  An Patchett is a really good writer.  Her prose is beautiful.  So why pick a topic that she has such a deaf ear to?

All writing classes say "write what you know."  So why is Patchett writing from the perspective of three black kids, one from the projects and the other two adopted into a rich and powerful family?  Even if she's spent the last few years with kids just like that, how can she presume to know how to represent their thoughts on class, race and discrimination?

The whole thing just rang so false to me - and believe me, I love the author.  Her prose is always lovely, but she came across sounding limited here, like she never gets out.  You don't have to speak with many people of color about discrimination before hearing the phrase "you'll never understand what it's like" (usually spoken right after you say, naively, "I know just what you mean!")  So, Ann, how about some more books about the friendship between women, the pain and glory of becoming a writer, adult relationships, career self-doubt, and grown-up families?  How about books about quests and failures and success and patience?  How about some more books about what you know because you've been there?

I recently read Maya Angelou's "Heart of a Woman" (and wrote my thesis on "Invisible Man", and have read a bit of African American fiction over the years).  Reading about the black experience from a primary voice is much, more moving and convincing.  And helps you realize that as a white person you can never know "what it feels like to be black". "Run" was a presumptuous stretch that didn't succeed.  I also wholeheartedly agree with the reviewer I. Peters "Miezekatze" on Amazon who said, "Issue is piled up upon issue and not a single one is tackled in depth".

How Ironic!

The other day, the first wolf came to Massachusetts in a long, long time and we didn't give it a very warm welcome.  The grey wolf has been extinct in MA since 1840 (although one believed to have escaped from captivity was spotted here in 1918), so this was a rare and special event.  The nearest wolves live in Ontario and Quebec, leading experts to speculate that this wolf was perhaps a captive animal kept as a pet, or a hybrid wolf/dog.

However, it doesn't really matter anymore what it was, because it was shot dead by the farmer whose sheep the wolf was eating. He got permission first from a state biologist (because farmers' rights exceed other endangered species' rights by law in the USA).

"In 2003  the world sheep population was estimated at 1.03 billion head".  With the exception of Michigan and Alaska, the wolf is an endangered species in the USA.  "Species considered by the ESA to be endangered are considered to be at risk of extinction in all of or a large part of their range."

I noted this event with some sadness, but I didn't get around to blogging it until I heard this news: the world's longest-living animal, a 400-year-old clam from Iceland, was just discovered.  And -- need I say it?  Killed.  Of course, the news article isn't about how we killed it.  In fact, it doesn't even mention that we killed it.  It just says it was "dredged from the water" and then there's a picture of it split in half on a table.

An endangered grey wolf comes to Massachusetts for the first time in 167 years and a state biologist give the OK to shoot it.  Man just killed the oldest living creature on earth and the articles are all "we can't believe how old it was!"  I wonder how old it would have gotten had we allowed it to remain alive?  Is it just me, or is something about the way we treat our home and neighbors seriously messed up?

Boo to You!

Just taking a moment here to register a complaint that Ofoto -- whoops, I mean the Kodak EasyShare Gallery, which is a much better name, NOT -- as well as Snapfish, and Shutterfly, are practicing, lemming-like, a cluelessly poor customer service practice.

I recently got emails saying that these services were going to delete my pictures if I didn't hurry up and come buy something.  So, I hurried up and went to buy something, in advance of their deadline, and discovered that it had apparently been over a year already since I visited Ofoto and Shutterfly, since MY PICTURES WERE GONE.

This after all over the sites it says in huge letters that you get unlimited photo storage for free.  Let me tell you, you really have to look hard to find the part that tells you you have to buy something to keep your photos up there.  On Snapfish, I finally found it at the bottom of this page in the help section.

Anyway, so that deletion-unless-you're-a-customer policy is fine with me, if they had just been honest about it when I first signed up with all of them, which they weren't, because they likely didn't have the policy yet.  And probably they did try to tell me earlier, and my email had changed (most likely) or their messages got spam filtered (also happened but I check my spam filters) or possibly I just missed them, so you could even say that it's my fault that my pictures were deleted.  It's a stretch, but you could say it.

Here's what I have a problem with.  In a time where storing stuff is so cheap that companies are giving storage away for free all over the web, why did you lose all access to my photos  - even your access?  Don't you dingbats think that it's a better policy to simply hold them hostage if I miss the purchasing deadline, and charge me $50 if I want them back?  Did you have to actually delete them, as opposed to just making them inaccessible, if you hadn't heard from me in awhile?  I just think this is stupid.  It's a missed opportunity for innovative customer service and a missed opportunity for revenues. 

If you're in the business of storing people's photos for them, you should be in that business.  Period.  Photos do not have a 355-day shelf life.  So figure out a way to store them profitably, and if that means it's not free anymore if the user neglects to buy something, then that's what it means.  Which do you think makes me angrier: the fact that you have to make a living somehow, or lost pictures?

One Woman's Protest

Do you think women are responsible for runaway spending by our government?  I don't see many of them in high political roles these days, so I kind of doubt it.

So why would this ad (attempting to persuade us to vote against the gas tax in CA) prominently feature an open-mouthed, wet-lipped, big-busted blonde in a low-cut top playing with tons of money?

I'll tell you why: because some people stereotype women as having profligate spending patterns. 

You and I know better: in the average American home, more women than men are in charge of paying bills and balancing the checkbook.  The stereotypical image of profligate consumer spending is more accurately a man blowing his entire paycheck at the poker table or the bar or, better yet, buying a house and car that are beyond his means or investing in overblown stocks.

I wonder if the stereotype about women's profligate spending pictured there is behind the statistic that, although nearly 30% of US businesses are majority-owned by women, we only receive 3% of the venture funding.

Handily enough, they have a survey form right there, so you can check the "other" box and let them know exactly what you think of the picture they're using to promote their cause.