People are always trying to get me to buy a cell phone

Well really just Dad and r, but who needs to sign up for this kind of bullshit?

Your cell-phone company knows you hate it. Mobile-phone service was the second-lowest-ranked industry -- beating only cable providers among the 40 rated -- in the University of Michigan's newest customer satisfaction index.

And there's more: Mobile companies were the No. 2 sector in complaints last year to Better Business Bureaus, dropping from first place in 2002. Only auto dealers did worse.

Of course the cell providers are typically cynical bastards. How do they respond to the numerous service complaints and claims of fraud? Two ways: 1) By insulting their customers' intelligence.

Asked about the ranking, Verizon's Rabe said, "Compared to what? Lands' End? You have to compare apples to apples. I wouldn't compare the customer experience of dealing with a complicated technology with buying a shirt. It's just a whole different challenge."

This is disingenuous in the extreme. The "complicated technology" has absolutely nothing to do with hiding fees in fine print, or charging fees for services which cost the company little or nothing to produce, or charging a widow an "early exit" fee on a dead husband's contract.

2) Insulting their employees' intelligence.

To improve service, the company has increased training for customer service employees to 10 days a year, introduced a new plan it said addresses common complaints and tied executive compensation to customer satisfaction, said Cindy Rock, senior vice president for customer solutions at Sprint PCS.

In other words, in response to complaints from customers generated by the company's policy of institutionalized theivery, thousands of underpaid customer service representatives will be forced to sit through hours of condescending classes on how to smile presented by a soulless coke-head consultant who makes six times their salary.
These bastards will never ever ever see nickel one from me. If they get a law passed requiring me to personally disconnect the land line from my apartment, I will resort to communication by pigeon, or semaphore or smoke signal or just yelling loudly out the window before I sign a cell contract. The pigs. I hope they all get brain cancer.

link via nosey

Update: More on condescending bullshit corporate training here

X-try update 12 hours later: Check out Daisy going off on Fish! training. Fuck a bunch of Fish!