incoherence.net

A week.

That’s how long it took to search, ask, walk, and talk around to decide which store would have the privilege of signing me up as an AT&T customer. Even if I had already purchased a phone two months earlier and finally got to unlock its calling capabilities, I consider it time well spent.

Cell phone shopping is an exercise in patience. A mere 3 1/2 years ago, I was praising competitive Asian “authorized” resellers in providing cheaper phones of the overseas variety; I guess Asian drama marathons really do develop sharper business acumen. Sadly, maybe they’ve turned jaded overtime, or maybe it’s simply me wising on to their tactics, but their cell phone selection isn’t that great anymore (it tends to be the carrier’s lock down policies, though) and the prices aren’t that cheap either.

So this time I stuck with an official AT&T store for my phone needs. In addition to a more professional decor and capacity to serve more than one customer, the official store has plenty of phones in stock (Asian stores tend to only have posters or plastic models of good phones, since they receive shipment once a month and only with the light of a blue moon), and at least the store I visited was nice/desperate enough to drop prices and knock off a few initialization charges – more than enough to cover the minuscule savings from the Asian place next door.

It’s a good thing I’m writing this a month after my initial dealings with the AT&T store.

The positive impression didn’t last the month. By Christmas time a bill graced my mailbox which included every single charge supposedly waived by the salesperson; even the brochures disclaim that the first bill “might be higher than normal” as they greedily tack on service charges, miscellaneous taxes, and activation fees. The system is undoubtedly set up so that a good number of customers just accept the charges despite promised promotional rebates, forgotten amidst the sands of time.

Thus, places that sell you phones can be summarized like this:

• Asian stores have lots of cheap phones and know how to work a calculator to give you “free phones”. They also have shoddy service and what looks like accessories obtained from the lowest bidding Asian black markets.
• Non-Asian authorized resellers just gouge you on price and service. Not sure how they continue to stay in business.
• Online resellers are usually as good as the carrier’s stores and sometimes are even better, but good luck trying to find help when you inevitably have either a broken phone or $2,000 cell bill from a misconfigured network setting.
• Official retailers can offer cheap prices and good service, as long as you triple check every document presented and return every other day to ask questions and keep them honest. Sheer annoyance at seeing the same guy yell about the same stupid issue the store can’t fix will surely make the world more peaceful. For people not in the store.

Seems like online purchases are the least of evils, again. Oh internet, is there anything you can’t make better? I suggest starting with making the entire telecomm industry not suck…