[if(is_geek)…]

This is part 8 of a multi-part post on my battle to get an iPhone for myself and a Blackberry Pearl Flip for my wife from Roger’s wireless. Previous episodes: Episode 1: The Phantom iPhone, Episode 2: A Lack of a Phone, Episode 3: Revenge of the Pissed, Episode 4: A New Phone, Episode 5: The Empire Bills Back, Episode 6: Return of the Mad Guy, Episode 7: Seeing Red.

The last episode ended with me being seven business days from finally getting the last issue with Roger’s resolved: the missing six months of warranty. After waiting with great anticipation, I dialed the phone. Even after all of this time (four months in total by now) I was somehow still optimistic that they would finally come through for me. The number I dialed was the direct line to the Resolve department and it connected me with the ordinary phone queue and eventually an ordinary customer service rep. Oh well, I didn’t really need to talk to someone in the Resolve department, right? Any old monkey could check my account to see if everything had been resolved. Sure enough, the woman I was talking to was able to look up my account and….nope. There was no resolution to the UPS investigation. No credit on the account for the original phone. No new phone inbound to me. I started over and told my whole story for the umpteenth time. She couldn’t help me. All of that, especially the new phone, would have to be handled through the Resolve department. So I waited patiently for a transfer.

The Resolve department rep I was connected to told me her name was Megan. Megan had a great deal of trouble entering my phone number into the system correctly. After three tries she finally got it right and put me on hold for 10 minutes while she read over the history of my file. I know that the music they play on hold is chosen to be soothing and put me at ease. Somehow knowing that just made me really angry. I was not wanting to be soothed, I was wanting to be helped.

Megan returned to the line to give me some good news: the charge for the original iPhone had been reversed! Excellent! How about the late payment charges? (I might have forgot this bit in the last episode – they had been charging me for late payments ever since the extra $250 appeared on my bill. I had explained to them there was no way I was going to give them an extra $250 just to avoid being unfairly charged for late payments. They didn’t get it and kept on charging me.) Negative on the late payment charges. How about the new phone? Nope. Megan told me that had to be done through customer service, not resolve. Exactly the opposite of what customer service had said. Awesome. Transfer time.

Megan hung up on me.

I call again, this time trying to get to customer service. Katherine is there to assist me. Yet again I tell my whole tale. Can she help me? Nope. It isn’t customer service that can help me, it is customer relations. Customer relations is also known as the resolve department. sigh. I hold my breath this time as I am transferred to…

Isabel. Again I tell my tale. I am no longer in the mood to be helped. I am in the mood for an ultimatum. “Isabel,” I said as politely as I could, “you really only have three options now. I paid for a brand new phone with a one-year warranty and I did not get it. So, you can either 1) send me a brand new phone with one-year warranty intact, 2) credit my account for one-half the original cost of my phone since I am only getting half of the warranty I was promised or 3) extend the warranty on my current, refurbished phone to a full year.” She told me she would see what she could do and placed me on hold.

I am not sure what I was expecting to hear when she came back online, but I wasn’t expecting what she told me. She told me that they were placing a credit on my account for $150 to cover half the price of the phone. Furthermore, she was placing $30 worth of credits on my account for the erroneous late payment charges. Finally, she was going to put a long note on my account indicating that if I ever call in again with problems, I am to be transferred to the customer relations department where they will provide me with a new phone at the lowest possible rate.

I am not sure that I believe all of her promises, as I have been fooled by them plenty before. However, the credits she promised all appeared on my bill. All told, I ended up paying them $199 for the iPhone and $49 for the Blackberry. They then applied $320 worth of credits to my account, plus $10 / month /phone for three years (totaling $720 over the course of the contract) and whatever the unlimited local calling and unlimited data would have been worth. On the balance sheet I came out ahead of the game but I am not sure whether or not all of the pain and trouble was worth it.

Some final thoughts and reflection on the whole ordeal is next, in the Epilogue.

Update 07/27/2009: Roger’s Wars Epilogue has been released.