Jasonisms

I can’t believe I’m taking time out of my day to write this up, but here I am. Today is the 17th of March, 2021.  On 14JAN2021 I ported my number over to at&t when I joined a corporate plan. The following day I swung by a T-Mobile store to pay my account off. I figured it would be just a couple of days worth as my billing cycle ended on the 10th of the month.  I was told I had to wait for the current billing cycle to end before they could accept payment for any prorated charges. Fair enough. This was a stupid policy, but I didn’t argue. In early February I went to another T-Mobile store and was told my final bill was an entire month’s worth of service. I explained how this didn’t make sense, but the kid tried to explain to me that with T-Mobile’s billing cycle you pay for the month before the one that just ended, not the month you’re going into. So, you’re paying two months ago’s service, not paying for the upcoming month. Okay … This didn’t make sense, but sure. Since I h...

What a week in tech support , he says in exasperation! First  +Dish Network . A few months ago, after trial after trial after trial (notice the lack of tribulations) of using  +Century Link  DSL service, my roommate changed the service provider for our internet to Dish Network who recently entered the ISP game by reselling or repackaging, the Century Link product. The good news, though, is customers who switched to Dish didn't have to deal with Century Link tech support anymore, just their shoddy service. Over the course of the switch from service providers, there have been a few hiccups, but for the most part everything has seemed fine -- when there was an outage lasting long enough to warrant a call to tech support Dish Customer Service was friendly, courteous and efficient: the complete and utter opposite of Century Link's customer care. And then Monday happened. Monday morning the internet connection at the house worked fine. I social networked, I job search...

Come on,  +T-Mobile , all I wanted was to be able to tell my friend his keys were indeed in my truck. That's it. Is that too much to ask?

I have been an Android user since the first Android,  +T-Mobile 's G1. I've also been a Google Voice user since that service was announced and those of us not special could grab out GV numbers. As soon as the GV app for Android became available I downloaded it to my G1 and used it for making and receiving calls. When I upgraded to the G2 a couple of years later, I downloaded the GV app again. Easy, peasy, one, two, threesy. At no time was there an issue with setting up GV voicemail to circumvent the carrier's standard voice mail system. I am a fan of using Google's voice for my voicemail needs for a number of reasons: email notification and (let's say) attempt to transcribe the message; an mp3 file of the message for future record; and more control. I like control. When I purchased the Note II from  +T-Mobile  I quickly downloaded the app and set up the device to use Google's Voice for voicemail. Unfortunately, it never took. Although the s...

I haven't complained about T-Mobile much on this blog, but instead have made my complaints known on social media, specifically Google+. I've had numerous problems with their network and have called to complain countless times. I have troubleshot with their CSRs and Tech Support, changed out my SIM for a brand-spanking new one, and downloaded apps I was told (by T-Mobile retail staff) would help stabilize my network connection. Today, on my monthly sojourn to the T-Mobile store to pay my bill, I again mentioned my dissatisfaction with my bill of roughly $90, and the non-consistent service I've been getting for a while. I ca literally sit in one place and and watch as my service goes in and out, or be using my device and in the middle of adequate service, the entire voice and data connections is lost. These aren't isolated event, but happen multiple times a week across a large span on geography. Yes, when I'm near the outskirts of town or in a smaller area further...

Dear T-Mobile ,  A couple of months ago I decided I was tired of the intermittent service and decided to call in every single time I dropped either voice or data services to report the outage. Now, as you can imagine, without voice service I couldn't call so I had to wait, sometimes a few minutes, and sometimes a half hour or so, until I gained service back and could make the call. After about the fourth time the customer service representative in "retention" offered me a new phone, any handset I chose, to try for 20 days and see if my service was better. We talked about it, I asked what she had in mind since I wasn't interested in a bare-bones entry-level phone. She said, since I'd been such a good T-Mobile customer, she would make available any  handset I was interested in. I informed her I had been eyeballing the HTC One S and the Galaxy SIII , but couldn't decide which was a better piece of hardware. We talked over the merits of each and I also men...

So, I had to call T-Mobile regarding my G2 that I've had for only a week. I seem to drop a lot of calls and lose signal much more often then I ever did with my G1 so I called to check and see if they were having tower issues or anything. For example, in a 20 min call this morning I dropped 6 times. While on the phone with TMo I dropped a few more times. Luckily, the second customer service rep I spoke with was on the phone with me while I was losing the calls(he was kind enough to call me back) and it was finally his suggestion that my handset was bad and that I'd need a new one. So, tomorrow morning I get to mail it back to them, get them a tracking number and they send me out a brand-spanking shiny new one. I do have the option to get a different phone model from them, but dammit if I don't love the G2. So, I guess I'll be sliding the ol' SIM card back into the G1 and use GMail's calling feature unit the new one arrives.

Okay, so I pulled the trigger.  With all the hoopla about the Nexus S  right now went and bought a G2 as a follow-up to my G1. Why? Well, the Nexus S doesn't have an SD card so no expansionability, nor does it come with HSPA+ which was a real big drawback to me going forward .  Both have the vanilla Android and the G2 can  record HD video.  Plus, I like the design a little better.  A lot of modern smartphones are looking like iPhone clones and that really annoys me. So, since TMo has a special right now for the G2: I called TMo and asked to speak to the retention department (a little trick I was taught to get superior customer service in regards to new phones, etc) and spoke with a nice gentleman who told me I wouldn't be ready for an upgrade until January.  No biggie, I could wait.  He then said: "Heck, you're a good customer" and gave me the early-early upgrade. Yay! After all was said and done I hung-up completely satisfied.  ...

I went down to the TMo store today and held a myTouch4G alongside a G2. The myTouch4G feels more plasticky than the solid feeling G2 however all the Galaxy S phones as well as the Droid X and the newest Palm's feel plasticky to me as well, so I won't complain about that too much. According to the sales guy there at the store, the innards (yes, I said "innards" and am not getting a misspelling notice which makes me wonder) are pretty much the same between the two devices. Both have 1ghz proessors, however the G2's is de-clocked (underclocked?) on purpose to allow for greater battery life. From what he said, there's also a secondary 3D graphics processor in the G2 which helps it maintain those lightning fast speeds. I'm not sure if that's true or not. The mTouch4G does not have the Snapdragon (Scorpion) proc but it is at 1ghz instead of the 800mhz of the G2 and comes with a front-facing camera for video-chat. I'm not sure if that's a sel...