Cell phone follow up OR Customer Service Win #956

There’s been a pretty happy-ish ending our cell phone purgatory tale of woe.

First, a little back story:
Because, as I mentioned yesterday, The Husband also goes by the alias “Consumer From Hell,” we have never paid for a cell phone. Never. Five people on our account, new phones every year and a half for each person, and we Never. Pay. For. Phones. In fact, we rarely pay for the upgrades. That’s the beauty of having the Consumer From Hell in your family. You see, every time we make a change, the phone company completely screws something up. Mr. Consumer From Hell is happy to wear down every customer service rep for hours on end, until they give him an enormous credit on our bill, free service, free upgrade, whatever. Oh – and there’s his secret weapon: the customer retention department. Want to get your way with a service that’s trying to pull a fast one on you? Demand to speak to a customer retention person.

Now, for the final chapter of our weekend phone purgatory odyssey:
The Husband returned from the phone store 40 minutes past their closing time. Here was his story:
•He remained buddies with the awesome on-site sales people. They immediately offered him a big credit on our bill, which effectively made my new iPhone free of cost.
•He was on the phone with customer service people most of the time he was there, and on them he unleashed his wrath. Their first solution was that Oldest Sister, who is 100% an innocent bystander in all this drama, would have to find a store in Chicago, find a way to get there, and have them give her a new SIM card (because they had indeed, mistakenly shut down her phone). Guess how well that solution went over?
•Final solution: Surprise, surprise, they do have a way to reactivate her phone remotely, though it’s “against company policy.” Ask us how much we care about company policy. So Oldest will have her phone automatically reactivated later today because the rep condescendingly offered to “expedite the process” (we hope…).
•The customer retention department will be in touch with us (No, they won’t. The Husband will end up spending another hour on the phone at some point forcing someone to talk to him. He will win.) about a reduction to our monthly rate.

A couple more follow-ups:
•Once Middle Sister’s account was reactivated in the proper phone, we were able to listen to a voicemail that had been left the phone thief. The message was for a young lady in foster care who had attended the Good Friday service, who had been suspected all along.
*Middle Sister communicated with a person from the church, and found that another phone had been stolen at the Easter Vigil last night.
*There’s some small chance we may be able to get the phone back, which would mean we’re one phone up and The Husband would then have a smart phone.
*And I’m now having my usual slight grieving process over changing phones. Stupid to be so attached to an inanimate object, but I always miss my old phone when I trade up. The fact that I traded up to an iPhone helps.

Looks like an eventual happy ending.

Oh, and by the way – Happy Easter!