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January 23, 2005 |
WTVN Radio • Columbus, Ohio Sunday morning from 8 until 9 |
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Number portabilityThe good news is that number portability works and there are ways to get the dozens (or hundreds) of number you've stored in your old phone into your new phone. The bad news is that your previous carrier may conclude that you owe them a lot of money. I've had phones from Sprint for many years and have always been satisfied with the calling areas, the plans, and the overall service. I have also always said that the customer service department appears to have been trained by the management of GUM, the state-owned department store in the former Soviet Union. Shortly before Thanksgiving, I had a minor problem with Sprint and it required making a call to their customer support number. The person I spoke to was pleasant enough and took care of the problem promptly. But then she shifted to sales mode and tried to sell me something. This isn't uncommon (I had the New York Times do the same thing in December) but it's annoying nonetheless. In my world, support people would never, ever conclude a support call with an attempt to sell something. If the problem has been resolved quickly and professionally, the customer is probably neutral. If anything has delayed the problem resolution, the customer has a negative image of the company. In either case, this is not the time to be selling something and you'd think that managers of companies as large as Sprint is would know that. The sales push had an unintended consequence. The sales rep had tried to sell me a 2-year extension to my plan. That suggested to me that the plan had already expired or was about to expire. A quick trip to Sprint's website confirmed that the agreement both for my number and my younger daughter's number had expired a week or so previously. So I started looking around at other plans to see what the competition offered. The Sprint plan I was on was a good plan. It gave me all the minutes I needed (and more) every month. But I found a plan from T-Mobile that cost a little less and offered a few enhancements that seemed worthwhile. I checked the Sprint website again to confirm that both lines were currently operating on month-to-month agreements. The transfer processThe Saturday after Thanksgiving, I dropped by a T-Mobile store. I talked with one of the sales reps and signed up for the plan I'd looked at on their website. From what I'd read about number portability, I knew the process might well take 48 hours or more. The FCC's goal is something like 2 hours, but that's when everything is in order. I figured something would delay the process, but it didn't matter because it was a holiday weekend. Surprise! The T-Mobile phone started working less than 3 hours later, at least for phone calls. I checked the Sprint website and noticed that my account had been canceled. But I was unable to create an account on the T-Mobile site. I called their tech support. The first thing I noticed was that I got to a technician within 60 seconds. When I explained the problem, the tech support person understood what I had said, was able to confirm that the problem I was reporting actually existed, and admitted that it was the result of a misconfiguration on T-Mobile's part. The support person filled out a trouble ticket and said that the problem would be taken care of within 24 hours. He was telling the truth, too. That wasn't quite the end of the start-up problems, though. I'd signed up for a service that allows me to send and receive e-mail from the phone. I wasn't able to do that, though, even after waiting 72 hours. I called tech support again and was passed up the line from a level 1 technician to a level 2 technician in less than 5 minutes and then to a level 3 technician a few minutes later. What I learned along the way was that T-Mobile apparently picked up a lot of new customers around Thanksgiving and that the e-mail problem was a known problem that they were working on. The difference between T-Mobile and Sprint was that the T-Mobile technicians all appeared to be pleased that I had called. They also seemed to be interested in solving the problems I reported and genuinely sorry that the problem existed. This kind of treatment was so different from what I'd come to expect from Sprint that I mentioned it to several people. A couple of weeks later, I received another call from a T-Mobile technician. He was calling to confirm that I'd been able to long on to the website application and that everything was working as I expected it to. Wow! That's service the way it should be -- and I should point out that T-Mobile's technicians have no knowledge of the fact that I'm a technology reporter. This is just routine service that every customer gets. Surprise #2: The audio quality of the T-Mobile phone is better than Sprint's. I hadn't expected that. Additionally, the signal from the T-Mobile cell-site is noticeably stronger at my office than was the signal from Sprint. On the other hand, the signal at some of the buildings Kaydee frequents is worse.
Surprise #3: I received an invoice from Sprint in early December and that invoice included a $150 cancellation fee. My first attempt to communicate with Sprint was simply ignored by the company and I received a second invoice for $150 and nearly $10 in late fees in early January. I have now written to Sprint's chief operations officer, Len Lauer, to explain the situation. I doubt that I'll hear from him and suppose that the company will continue billing me for something I don't owe and that I will continue not paying it. This is typical Sprint "customer service".
Surprise #4 (but not really): If you've decided that you don't really need a standard home telephone any more, number portability also applies to "landline" numbers. Your service provider is doing everything possible to ensure that you are not aware of this, but you can keep your existing home number and assign it to cellular service. What was unusual a few years ago (having just a mobile phone and no home phone) is becoming increasingly common. Easing numbers from phone to phoneIf you have a phone that has 20 numbers stored in it, moving those numbers to a new phone (same service or different) isn't a big deal. But if you have dozens or hundreds of numbers, you may not want to spend the time needed to manually enter those numbers in your new phone. The good news is that you don't have to. One of the Macintosh magazines I subscribe to had an advertisement for Data Pilot, which promised to make the process possible, maybe even easy. I contacted Bogdan Mosteanu at Susteen Inc, to find out more. DataPilot has been around for three years, but the product didn't become well known until 2004 when the company got into the big retail stores such as Best Buy, CompUSA, and Fry's. Some stores use Susteen's DTC product to transfer data from your old phone to your new phone. If you buy a new phone from one of those stores, you might wonder why you would be interested in Data Pilot. Here's why: Data Pilot can keep a copy of your address book on a desktop or notebook computer and allow you to update the phone easily. Besides that, Data Pilot lets you edit ringtones, use any photo for your phone's "desktop", maintain a calendar on your phone, and more. It's because of Data Pilot that I have photos of Scampi and Tangerine that I can use as the background on my phone. (I'll have to create a phone photo for Cheese, too!) Data Pilot works with dozens of phones and, depending on the package you choose to purchase, you receive up to 7 cables. Susteen doesn't include cables for some phones (such as the Nokia 6800 that I bought) but you can use Data Pilot to update it if you buy the additional IrDA cable or if your notebook or desktop computer includes an IrDA port.
Smartphones may not be so smart after allUsers of cell phones have something in common with PC users: worms, viruses and other crap. And it's only going to get worse. Carriers are pushing users to upgrade to "smart phones" that provide numerous additional (handy) services -- from customized interfaces and text messaging to e-mail and video. But as manufacturers add these services, they must add processing power and software to run them. The operating systems are small and limited and the result is that crooks can, without trying too hard, use the same technology the service providers use to download their toys to your phone. We've been hearing about worms and viruses for handheld devices since the mid '90s. Until now, it's been mostly companies like Symantec warning that the threat is coming. Well, it's here. If you use your cell phone to buy things today, you're exposing yourself badly. And if you have a phone that supports Bluetooth, your risk is even greater. Signals may be digital and even be encrypted, but if a creep manages to install malware on your phone, all that is meaningless. Do you really need to buy things by using your phone as a browser? I wouldn't. The security simply isn't yet in place yet, and may not be for several years. If providers fail to respond to a known threat now, they should be held accountable for losses. Microsoft came of age at a time of innocence when computers were free-standing units and the Internet wasn't available outside colleges and the defense industry. After more than 20 years, it's clear that crooks will take advantage of anything that looks promising. Right now, "smartphones" look really good to the creeps. Nerdly NewsCreeps on your computerA single, absent-minded, wrong click could install hundreds of bad applications on your computer. Thanks to Harvard student Ben Edelman, we have a clue about some of them. Ben's website discusses "Media Files that Spread Spyware" and describes one low-life's use of digital rights management warnings to install an enormous amount of crap on your computer. "When Windows Media Player encounters a file with certain 'rights management' features enabled, it opens the web page specified by the file's creator," Edelman writes. "This page is intended to help a content providers promote its products -- perhaps other music by the same artist or label. However, the specified web page can show deceptive messages, including pop-ups that try to install software on users' PCs. User with all the latest updates (Windows XP Service Pack 2 plus Windows Media Player 10) won't get these popups. But with older software, confusing and misleading messages can trick users into installing software they don't want and don't need -- potentially so many programs that otherwise-satisfactory computers become slow and unreliable." Ben set up a clean computer to see what this trick would do to it. Here's what happened:
YOW! Take the time to read Ben's report (the link is above) to understand the ongoing corruption of the Internet. Microsoft says they'll fix the problemFor a week now, Microsoft has said that it has no plans to fix the problem. Late in the week, they did an about-face. Microsoft now says it will release an update in the next 30 days to help thwart the threat of spyware infection. For a company that has frequently claimed "security" is its most important consideration, it seems strange that this decision took a week's worth of thinking and no small amount of pressure from the outside. In Microsoft's words, "While this issue is not the result of any exploit of Windows Media DRM, we do recognize it may cause problems for some of our customers," the company said in a statement. "To help mitigate these problems, Microsoft is committed to providing an update to Windows Media Player in the next 30 days that would allow the end-user more control over when and how any pop-ups display in the license acquisition process." Just about the time I think Microsoft really understands the need for security, they do something bone-headed like wait a week to respond to a serious security threat. It's as if they've forgotten that consumers increasingly have viable choices. The changing face of commercePublished reports say that consumers spent $117 billion on-line in 2004. That's a 26% increase over 2003 according to ComScore Networks, a market research firm. The biggest winners are those who also had traditional stores. Stores such as Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and CompUSA. The company reported that cellular phone service websites posted huge gains, too, and noted specifically T-Mobile.com. I can attest to the validity of that statement, having been one of the people who waited more than a week for access to the site after changing my service to T-Mobile from Sprint. The research firm says that shoppers made purchases later than ever. Sales were up dramatically the weeks of December 12 and December 19. The "just-in-time" techniques used by manufacturers appears to be moving to the consumer segment of the market. Many retailers offered low-cost overnight shipping this year, which probably added the trend. Purchases in those two weeks increased more than 50% over last year for each week. Despite the large increases, Internet sales still make up a small portion of the overall retail market. Let us know what you think. Write to:
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Joe(Photo by Sally) |
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NINE CATS: If everything had been ready as promised, I would have given T-Mobile a solid 10, but that wasn't the case. Everything worked properly, eventually, and the support staff followed up with calls to confirm that everything was working. That's something I've never encountered with Sprint. 
THREE CATS: Sprint has a good network and with the recent Nextel merger (some are suggesting the new company should be called "Sextel") the company will be the third largest cellular telephone provider. When it comes to technical quality, Sprint would earn eight cats. For customer service, no cats. The 3-cat rating in an average of sorts. My recommendation today is to avoid Sprint. 
TEN CATS: Wow! No question about it -- if you want to move phone numbers from one device to another and the company you're dealing with doesn't do it for you, this is the software to buy. It's easy to use and even lets you replace the phone's default background with a photo of your spouse, your kids, or your cat. 
