so.very.angry.

I use a prepaid cell phone because I hardly use it (except to text) and I can't justify spending a chunk for a monthly plan. I've had no complaints with my service for the past 2 years... until now. I had the feeling that my minutes were rapidly disappearing, but I convinced myself I was just using it more than I realized.

I have never gone through the 300 minutes in 2 months time, so I was alarmed when I got down to 50 minutes remaining last Friday. In a matter of 6 texts sent and received, I was completely out of minutes. (That should have cost me a total of 6 minutes). I was away from home until late Friday, so I emailed my phone company that night. They replied and told me to call tech support.

I live by a general rule: don't ask for a supervisor. They can't do more than a regular agent, so don't waste your time or theirs. However, the agent I spoke to today was completely inept. She had me on hold for 70% of the call while she "checked something with her supervisor" and she just seemed new and inexperienced at her job.

I am really nice and patient on the phone. Supervisors get treated SO poorly by people that are angry or feel entitled to things. I should know. It's what I do for a living. Anyway, this supervisor got on the line and was very unhelpful. She was rude, defensive, condescending, and literally could not subtract .5 from 227 without the use of a calculator and three minutes of my time. When all was said and done, my phone is still not fixed and I screamed at a stranger on the phone.

She told me she could give me as many as 300 courtesy minutes for the problem (I've gone through more than 100 just this weekend because of the issue) and in the same breath told me that it would be 100 because I didn't call sooner to report the problem (um, noticed the problem Friday night and was out of town on Saturday. bite me) and that she was only going to issue 30 because I couldn't tell her how many text messages I've sent while having this issue. She told me she was punishing me for not calling the second I thought there might be an issue. Silly me. I thought the phone should handle that so I didn't have to.

So, I got angry. And I screamed at her for about 30 seconds. And hung up. I was most angry because the phone is still not working and I had to waste 17.5 minutes (of test texts) proving to the sup that there was an issue. I don't want to call again. Both representatives of their company failed at something simple. Neither offered solutions. Neither wanted to help. So, I'm venting to cool off before I come up with a solution of my own. I like this company and the rate I pay, so I don't cant to cancel, but I have to figure something out.