Category: phone

more cable TV and internet shenanigans

I got a phone call from my cable company recently; the person who called started rattling out a prepared script about some good news: they were upgrading my internet speed. I got suspicious pretty quickly, and, at some point in the script, she mentioned some additional fees. I assumed the call was a sneaky way of getting me to agree to upgrade my account, and cut her off to tell her that I was happy with my current service and didn’t want to upgrade. Then I hung up.

Afterward, I started to get a feeling that maybe I should have listened all the way through or at least tried to engage her in conversation and get some questions answered. Maybe it wasn’t a sneaky attempt to get me to agree to a service upgrade, but instead a sneaky way to try to brand a price increase as a service upgrade.

A few days later, I got an email from them, again with the “good news” that they were increasing my internet speed, to 60 Mbps. I read the fine print carefully, but there was no explicit mention of a price increase or any additional fees.

So I did some internet research, and I found a thread at DSL Reports that seemed to confirm that there would, indeed, be additional fees. So I then went and checked my most recent bill, and found the details in the fine print there. It looks like they’re going to start charging a $5/month modem rental fee, starting next month. And they’re signing me up for their “service protection plan,” for free until the end of the year, after which it’s probably $7/month. (I think I can drop that when the free period is up, at least.)

The most frustrating thing about all this is how they can’t just come out and tell you that they’re raising prices. It’s always a bunch of double-speak and shenanigans. The “service protection plan” is (of course) nonsense.  And the modem rental fee is also pretty ridiculous. (And they try to make it sound like they’re doing you a favor on it, by discounting it from the usual $10/month fee.) I might be able to dodge the modem rental fee by buying my own modem, but it’s not clear if they’d let you do that, or how much grief it would be to set up. (And I’m not really in a mood for a bunch of extra grief right now, so I’ll probably suck it up and pay the fee.)

Anyway, Cablevision/Altice just keeps getting worse, but I don’t really have any alternatives. I also found out recently that Verizon is retiring their old copper lines in my area, and that they probably wouldn’t be running new fiber into my apartment building. So I may lose the option of getting POTS from Verizon soon. (I know all the “young people” think that having a landline phone is an anachronism, but I kind of like having one.) So I might have to drop home phone service entirely, or switch to Optimum Voice, giving Altice yet another way to drain money out of my wallet. (Also, I had always assumed that Verizon FiOS was an option for me, for internet service, but from what I’m hearing, apparently it never was, since my apartment building isn’t wired for it. So I’m stuck with Altice for TV, Internet, and maybe phone service.)

Oh well. (Yes, I know that this was a pointless rant, but if I can’t rant on my own blog, where can I rant?)

Verizon’s new plans

I can’t decide if I want to switch to Verizon’s new version of the “medium” plan, and get an extra gig of data, plus (limited) rollover data, for $5 more than I’m paying now. My old plan is $45 for 3 GB. The new version is $50 for 4 GB. (The additional $20 device fee stays the same.)

I’ve been staying below 3 GB largely by never streaming music over LTE. Going to 4 GB would give me room to listen to a little streaming radio now and then, which would be nice.

my new iPhone SE

I successfully picked up my new iPhone SE from UPS yesterday. Weirdly enough, everything went smoothly with that. (I have a history of problems with this sort of thing…) I used these instructions to transfer everything from the old phone to the new one, and again everything went smoothly.

So now I have a phone that looks almost identical to my old phone, only with better battery life, more memory, and a few other improvements.

I’m now working on getting the old phone ready for trade-in. It took three tries, but I finally managed to get through the process on the BrightStar site, Apple’s partner that handles trade-ins. (They really don’t have the whole usability thing figured out.) I just need to wipe it and pack it up now, and I should get $150 for it. That $150 will be Apple Store credit, though, so I’m not sure what I’ll do with that. It would be enough to pay for half an Apple Watch, though I’m still not convinced I need one of those.

waiting for my iPhone SE

I will hopefully have my new iPhone SE tomorrow.

Figuring out the logistics of getting this phone has been a bit of a task. When I ordered it from Apple, in-store pickup would have been easiest for me, but wasn’t an option. Next-day shipping was free, but they didn’t say which carrier they’d use. It turns out they’re using UPS, which complicates things a bit for me.

There was an option (via Apple) to waive the signature requirement. If I did that, then UPS would probably have left the phone for me today, and I’d probably have it. But there would have been a non-trivial chance that someone would have stolen it, and waiving the signature requirement means Apple and UPS take no responsibility for that. So I kept the signature requirement.

Once I got the e-mail with the tracking number, I was hoping I could tell UPS to hold the package at their office in Bound Brook, so I could just pick it up. But you can’t do that with just a tracking #, unless you’re in their “My Choice” program. Which I can’t get into, since they think my address is commercial and not residential. I spent some time on the phone with them last year trying to straighten that out, but didn’t really get anywhere. And I checked last night, and the issue still hasn’t been fixed.

So I had to wait for them to make a delivery attempt and leave an info notice. Which they did today. With the info notice number, I can have them hold the package at their office. So I did that, and I can probably pick it up tomorrow. Of course, the office is only open from 8:30am to 6pm, so if I want to pick it up in the morning, I need to come into work late. And if I want to pick it up after work, I might not make it in time, if traffic is bad. Maybe I’ll go over on my lunch break. (And they’re not open on the weekend, so if I don’t get it tomorrow, I’ll have to wait until Monday.)

It’s kind of funny how many hoops I have to jump through just to get this package. But hopefully it’ll be worth it!

iPhone SE

I ordered myself an iPhone SE today to replace my old iPhone 5S. I ordered it from Apple (rather than Verizon), for no particular reason other than that the Apple Store website is nicer than Verizon’s.

It should show up at my home on 3/31, but it might turn into one of those things where the FedEx or UPS guy won’t leave it without a signature, and I have to go pick it up, in which case I probably won’t get it until 4/2. (I was hoping I could choose in-store pickup, but that’s not available yet.)

The iPhone SE is pretty much exactly what I want: a new phone that’s exactly like my old phone, only with a new battery, more memory (64GB instead of 32GB), Apple Pay, and a few other minor bells and whistles. I don’t want a bigger screen or that fancy 3D touch stuff. Heck, it should even fit in my old case (though I might buy a new case anyway.) And it’s been getting good reviews.

I’m planning on trading in my old iPhone, but I’m not sure whether I’ll go with Gazelle or Apple. It looks like Gazelle will give me $85 for it, while Apple might give me $150. Either of which is pretty good. (Verizon was only going to give me $15.)

I’m paying for the new phone at full price ($500), which is the first time I’ve done that, I think. Buying it on contract is apparently still an option for me. It would have cost only $50 that way, but my monthly bill would have gone up $20, so doing the math on that over two years, it would be slightly more expensive than buying the phone outright.

I keep thinking about leaving Verizon for another carrier, but I decided against that. My only real complaint about Verizon right now is that I’d like more than 3GB of data per month, or at least to be able to roll over unused data. But with more memory on the new phone, I can download more music to it, so maybe I won’t feel as tempted to use up all my data on streaming music, which is my usual problem.

Verizon iPhone thoughts

I’ve had my Verizon iPhone for a few days now. I’m mostly liking it, but I admit I miss a few things about my BlackBerry.
Stuff I like about the iPhone:

  • I haven’t had to reboot it.  (I used to have to reboot the BB almost every day.)
  • Lots of apps. (I had just a handful of apps on the BB.  The way memory worked in the older BB OS, you just couldn’t install too many apps.)
  • Much better web browser.
  • No more need for Missing Sync.

Stuff I miss from the BlackBerry Storm:

  • Dedicated camera button on the right side.
  • User-assignable button on the left side.  (I had it assigned to QuickLaunch, which I also miss.)
  • Ability to star a GMail message right in the native mail app (via the enhanced GMail plugin).
  • SurePress.  I know most reviewers weren’t keen on it, but I kind of liked it.

Verizon iPhone

I tried to order a Verizon iPhone this morning, but Verizon’s site really doesn’t like the idea of shipping it to my work address. If I tell it that the shipping address is a business, then it tells me that I need to enter a company name, but the form doesn’t have a field for company name. If I switch the drop-down to say that I want it shipped to a residential address, and just enter my business address anyway, then it tells me that I’ve entered an invalid address. A number of people have reported these problems in the Verizon iPhone 4 forums.

I eventually got the order to go through by playing around with different ways of formatting my company’s address until I hit on one that Verizon liked. I really think they could have done a better job on this though. An hour or two of QA on their preorder site, and they could have at least uncovered the company name bug and fixed that.

Motorola DROID Pro

Motorola DROID Pro first impressions | BGR | Boy Genius Report: “Something we can’t move past, though? The ear speaker. Talking on the phone with the DROID Pro is probably the worst of any handset we can remember.” — I was thinking about picking up a Droid Pro as a replacement for my BlackBerry Storm. But one thing I consider critical is being able to use the phone… as a phone. So maybe not.

more on BlackBerry syncing

After some finagling today, I figured out that I could keep using Missing Sync for my calendars if I just created a single dummy calendar on my Mac in iCal. It syncs my “real” calendars as read-only now, but I’m OK with that.

I’m still not sure what I’m going to do for my next phone, but if I was interested in Android, I’d be looking at the Droid Pro or maybe the Samsung Continuum.