let's do the spoon in the dishwasher!

so before i left to go venture around south asia for four months, i phoned Bell to see if i could suspend my account because 1) I was not taking my phone with me, 2) like 80% if the rest of the world uses GSM and not CDMA and 3) i'm not paying four months of international talk time. i was told 'no sorry, you can't suspend it.' this was kind of annoying because if my phone is basically sitting in a dark room, turned off for the duration, why the hell should I have to pay for air time on it? so after some grumbling with/at the customer service rep i knocked my plan down to whatever the cheapest Bell plan was. so like $20 a month on paper, but then you add on all those stupid charges that exist for some reason but no one really knows what they're for (ie. system access fee? wtf, come on get real, as if it really costs that much for people use your fucking network...) so it's probably around $35. anyway, Customer Service Lady says to me that after I get back all I have to do is redo whatever plan I want. Right. Understood. leave the phone off on the smallest plan you have, get back and feel free to revamp it anyway you choose. gotcha.
anyway, skip forward past the four months where i bought a quad band gsm phone that I could use for $12 a month with unlimited data usage and 1000 minutes of talk time...
i went over to park royal today in a new Ford Edge with Everlast on repeat... to see if I could switch to a plan that isn't costing me incoming AND outgoing texts (this should probably be illegal cause the rest of the world doesn't know what you mean when you say 'pay for sms'), get me some decent minutes and some of those unlimited fave things.
so i ask to switch to the $40 Student Plan cause you get ten numbers of unlimited with long distance (key), message center and call display.
"no, sorry, you can't do that. we have our regular fab five you can have."
...
i'm sorry, what? why not?
"you're not in the last twelve months of your contract."
yes, but I'm a student and I want the Student Plan. And really, what's the difference between the two?
"well, with the student plan you get ten numbers instead of five."
um, yeah, I got that. what else?
"that's it."
thus the whole "i was in south asia for four months and this is what i was told before I left" thing, which gets you "oh, well, you'll have to call customer service about that, but they're closed today."
thus begat the walking around the mall looking at other carriers, who, unfortunately were rife with salespeople just as stupid and unhelpful.
"you mean you'd pay the cancellation fee?" ARE YOU FUCKING DEAF? I SAID BELL IS PISSING ME OFF AND IM THINKING ABOUT SWITCHING YES I'LL PAY THE FUCKING FEE YOU NIMROD.
actually, the funniest guy was the dude at Fido who didn't really know how to respond when I asked if I could get the iPhone on their super cheap monthly deal. and he was like "well yeah..."and then looked all panicked and was like "butyouneedadataplan!" and i was like "um, no i don't" and then he was like "oh, right, but...one page view is like $20 and we have per second billing." it's as if no one in the store ever thought that anyone wold use the iPhone to actually make phone calls. he also recommened the iPhone over the Instinct because 'something about windows mobile' to which the easy response was 'it doesn't run on a Windows OS.' wow cellular industry, you really pick the cream of the crop to be your faithful representatives...

go swallow a knife, I hate you.

however, thanks to people with connections i should be able to get that student plan. mayhaps even rock a new phone for the fucking inconviences they seem to have just decided to throw my way.

let's do the spoon in the dishwasher!