Life as Crisis Management: The Consumer Cellular Kiada

 

Modern and postmodern bureaucracies, public or private, mostly private, have, been despite their claims of being efficient and effective, characterised by incompetencies of varying degrees since they were “created”. Sociologists, of course, have known this for a long time. I have experienced these incompetencies in my long life since I was a teenager but they have become, though I have only qualitative data to back up this hypothesis, even greater in the brave new digital world era.

I have experienced no greater incompetencies than in the telephone sector of the brave new digital media world. I initially went with Tracphone for my telephone service needs. I have email but corporations apparently don’t like to use email to communicate with you. They apparently think that telephones are more secure than email, a lie as the most recent data breach of a phone company, ATT in this case, shows. Tracphone was a disaster on so many levels. I finally managed, with the help of the Office of the Attorney General of New York State, to extricate my self from the intensely incompetent existentialist hell that is Tracphone and was even able to get a refund from that corporation in the process. With Tracphone finally in my rear view mirror I scurried on over to Consumer Cellular for my telephone needs.

Consumer Cellular, however, has proven to be almost as incompetent and mysterious in its bureaucratic operations as Tracphone. A bit of backstory first. The base charge for my Consumer Cellular service is $20. There are extra charges, which include taxes and all that other jazz, apparently of $8.11. Consumer Cellular also offers a reduction in the bill if you do autopay. The problem I have with all this is that my payments for service since I first signed up for Consumer Cellular have been all over the place and I can’t make sense of these significant fluctuations. My first payment to Consumer Cellular, according to my cheque book, was for $22.43. My second was for $18.12. My third and fourth were for $18.06. This months payment was for $28.12. 

I called Consumer Cellular customer service and asked for explanations why my bill went up this month. They said that I had a $10 dollar credit from Walmart that ended with this payment, something that I was not informed of but apparently I got because I bought the phone from Walmart, ended so my telephone charges rose. The problem with this explanation is that it does not really account for the fluctuations in my first four bills as far as I can tell. After I got my second bill I did not see what I assumed would be an autopay reduction in my first bill as I had autopay. I called customer service and asked why this reduction was not reflected in that bill. I As a consequence my bill was, or so I thought, reduced from $22.43 to $18.12. But no, I was later told that Consumer Cellular adds not subtracts the $5.00 autopay credit to accounts. Thus my $20 dollar base without the autopay reduction includes not only taxes and all that jazz but a $5.00 dollar charge which would bring my total bill up to $33 dollars plus. What I got from Consumer Cellular customer service, in other words, was a babel of inconsistencies, contradictions, and happy faced corporotese.

I have been trying to figure all this out but apparently you need a Ph.D in creative mathematics to make sense of it all. Did my Walmart credit not get fully credited to my first bill thus leading to declines in my charges for bills two, three, and four? Why was this decline in charges only around $5 dollars? That sounds more like a autopay credit to me? Speaking of autopay credit, don’t you just love the fact that Consumer Cellular’s autopay credit is not a subtraction of monies but an addition of monies?

The incompetence of Consumer Cellular, an incompetence foregrounded by the mysterious fluctuations my in my bills, fluctuations that are like those in the speculative stock market, didn’t end there. I called Consumer Cellular—I have now called them six times and contacted them via chat twice—and asked that electronic copies of my bills be sent to my email account. They sent them but what they sent does not indicate how much I paid each month. That information is blank. Additionally, I asked for transcripts of all conversations I have had with Consumer Cellular be sent to my email. That was impossible, they said and said I should contact Consumer Cellular if I wanted those. I want all this information because I intend to file complaints about Consumer Cellular with the Federal Communications Commission and the Office of the Attorney General of New York State. 

And so corporate capitalism goes and goes and goes…

Addendum: Consumer Cellular informed me that the reason for the discrepancy between the $18.12 and $18.06 charges had to do with tax rates.