Everett Greene responds:

Is it any wonder their stock has dropped like a rock since
the IPO? [See the article in this week's Newsweek.]

In my case, they stiffed me for $50 of unused time. I'd
refreshed my account via their Web site the day my account
was to expire and they said all was copacetic. The next
day I couldn't use the phone. I found that the fine print
in the contract says that one's account expires at midnight
the day /before/ the "expiration date" and the Web site had
blithely taken my renewal and pitched it into the dirty bit
bucket. When I suggested that they could be a bit lenient,
I was told, in effect, tough cookies.

Yeah, well basically that's the answer I got when I wanted to roam south
instead of north. Not both. Just a different one. Couldn't do it. Wouldn't do
it. So I cancelled and a week or so later, get a note saying they'd be glad to
make that arrangement. By now, of course, damned near everyone was beginning to
offer 'no roaming charges' for huge areas, so it would have been simple to pick
up another company, but...I found I didn't miss the cell phone, which I used to
forget and leave home some 80% of the time anyway. Why pay $40 a month for
something that gets used less than an hour a week?

I received a (form) letter awhile back from them asking if I
would be interested in becoming a customer again. I fired
off a missive suggesting that if they treated their existing
customers better, they wouldn't have so many ex-customers.


That's the MBA model: hype until you pump the initial figures, then sit back do
nothing unitl it collapses around your ears, at which time you wind up the hype
machine again.

Charlie Self
"To create man was a quaint and original idea, but to add the sheep was
tautology." Mark Twain's Notebook

http://hometown.aol.com/charliediy/m.../business.html