The Beauchamp FamilyYes, we really are this geeky…

So, Sprint finally resolved this… how it was resolved is kind of interesting. I was emailed by a supervisor in the equipment fraud department Sunday night. I think one of his people saw my Facebook complaints and contacted him and he emailed me assuring me he’d make sure someone handled it.

By 8:10am, I had a $250 on my account (I guess $50 for my trouble). I must say that once I got someone’s attention (too bad it had to be someone NOT in customer service) they took care of it right away. And everyone that’s contacted me since made sure to apologize for their error. In that respect, they’ve treated me very well. BUT – I have to wonder why it came to this. I mean, I spent hours emailing and calling and posting to social media places as well as their forums to get their attention. It shouldn’t work that way.

So – the reason they charged me an early termination fee is because I shut down the PHONE NUMBER that we reassigned to the older phone. Apparently, Sprint assigns lines of service the phone numbers and not serial numbers. I really think that’s ridiculous, to me, I’m doing away with an old phone, not a phone number. I could have easily ported my number to another carrier if that were the case. Instead, I wanted to stay with Sprint, keep my number and continue on about my business. I hope this is one practice they will look at in the future.

BUT the bottom line is that their customer service reps, supervisors, and retentions department screwed up. I wish someone would have told me somewhere down the line that I was getting hosed in that deal *laugh* Instead the retentions guy was all happy have a solution for me.

Such is life, I suppose. At the end of the day, I’m happy, but after 14 years of being a customer, I still can’t help but feel a little slighted. I mean, this was only over $200 and it was their mistake. There were several times in the past that something to do with Sprint actually WAS my mistake and I paid for it without a problem. I am very happy that they took care of it for me though, just sad that I had to make such an internet stink and throw a social media hissy fit to get it done.

I still remain a loyal Sprint customer… however maybe slightly more wary…

Update 11/16 4pm: Sprint finally did resolve this – the story is HERE (shorter this time, promise!)

Update 4:30pm: I realize it’s a weekend so I probably won’t hear back from anyone at Sprint, if I ever do, but so far this is the other actions I’ve taken. At this point, it’s more of a matter of principal. I’ve posted about this on Facebook (with some really interesting conversations going on too) and Twitter where a Palm developer responded. I also called and left a voice mail at the Consumerist’s Sprint whatever line. I also emailed a link to this blog post to dan@sprint.com, customerservice@sprint.com, sprintcares@sprint.com, ecare@cc.sprintpcs.com, and customer.servicenet@sprint.com (amazingly enough, none of them bounced and I got a standard “we really do care and someone might actually read this one day!” from the dan@sprint.com one). I’m simply not going to pay that $200. The had THREE different chances to make sure I knew not to change that number. I’m a 14 year customer. Will Sprint let a 14 year customer who is always singing their praises go over a $200 mistake that they made?

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Update 3:00pm: So,  I chatted with some poor guy at Sprint online customer service… I’m not sure that he understands that the $200 wasn’t something they would have charged me if the CSR people would have handled this properly in the first place.  So, it’s not like they are missing out on my little $200. So, they are willing to lose a 14 year customer over $200 that THEY made a mistake on and wouldn’t have gotten from me in the first place if they hadn’t, in my opinion, lied to me by omission? I love it. Chat transcript HERE.

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I’m so annoyed right now. Back 14 (?) years ago, we signed up with SprintPCS. They were brand new in Hawaii and we needed those newfangled cell phones. Any time I’ve ever upgraded my phone, I’ve never had a problem. I call them up and they make it happen. Back 10 years ago when we moved here to Austin, we brought our Sprint phones with us. Again, never had any real problems. Seriously, I’m constantly singing their praises (My AT&T friends will even tell you, when their service goes down I’m all “neener neener” at them). They’ve never messed up a bill even. In FOURTEEN YEARS. They usually are 2nd only to Amazon in customer service.

Until June. Tom had been dealing with this horrible Palm Centro that just never worked right and the face was chipping off and it was just a bad phone. But it was to the point that it never synced or worked right so we had to get rid of it and get something reliable. We could have paid the $50 or $100 (whatever) and gotten it replaced under our warranty (yes, we are those people that pay for all the extras, extended warranty, roadside assistance-I’ve had to use it twice and it ROCKS by the way, etc) but at that point we were considering either moving to an iPhone or getting him a Pre. I had gotten my Pre previously and he really liked it, but I was within my 30 day period so I could easily return it and we could move to the iPhone. No problem. I don’t really LIKE the iPhone, but with his phone being in the shape it was, I knew I could deal with it. But we both really really liked the Pre. It’s a fabulous phone and it was Sprint – who we trusted.

BUT… they wanted him to pay $800 for the phone when he went up to the Sprint store. Um. No. So, I called customer service to talk to them about getting out of his contract and returning my phone since it was under it’s 30 day thing. It would have cost us probably $200 to get out of his phone at that time. But no, they didn’t want to lose a customer of 10 (well, 14 really, but I guess Hawaii billing is separate?) years so off we went to customer retention (which I had dealt with before because they didn’t want to give us the same deal they were giving new customers on a Treo). They were great. Eventually the guy told me that what I needed to do is go get a NEW line of service with a new Pre and make the Centro an emergency phone (or drop it in a drawer because frankly it didn’t work!). It would cost me $60 for the 3 months left on his Centro contract because we could add a shared line for $20 per month so he even credited my account for that $60. I just needed to call and cancel the phone in 3 months when the contract was really up. Awesome. I was loving Sprint and again singing their praises and enjoyed my Palm Pre (in fact, I love this phone, it’s the perfect phone for someone with a mobile life/business). Yippee. We all win. Right?

So, last month, I called them up to cancel the phone. No problem, they did it, they didn’t say anything about fees or anything. Voila. Easy. Again, I’m telling everyone I know how cool Sprint is. But today, my phone was doing something weird so I called Sprint to ask for help (ended up being able to fix it myself while on hold) but the lady said “oh, and to update you on your balance, it’s $360″. Um. What? I thought maybe they hadn’t gotten the payment I sent on the 27th, but no, they had gotten it. Weird. So the lady opens up my account and tells me that I have a “termination fee”. I’m lost. What termination fee? We aren’t leaving Sprint. We are super loyal, ask Time Warner or Bank of America or State Farm or, hell, ask Sprint! But apparently, that phone I canceled? They want to charge me because I added the line in June. WHAT? No no no, I canceled the CENTRO not the Pre.

But apparently they don’t show it that way or it connects to the phone number (because I switched the phone numbers on the phones when we got his Pre). I’m still confused and no one can answer me as far as why they are charging me. The customer retention dude told me this was all a done deal. I was a very happy customer. So, I call back and tell this same story to 3 or 4 people. Until I get to customer retention where he basically tells me “too bad”. Um. What? I didn’t do anything wrong here! I did exactly what YOUR department told me to. He then tells me that this was all in the terms of service. Yes, I know that document. I’ve seen it in various forms for the past FOURTEEN YEARS. But I assumed that was handed by customer retention or didn’t apply because we were canceling after 2 years with the Centro. He didn’t mention it at the time, the lady who I switched the phone numbers with said nothing, the lady who I canceled the phone with was VERY nice and didn’t mention it. What? I’m basically yelling at this poor guy, it’s not his fault, HE didn’t lie to me, but it’s not fair. I didn’t do anything wrong here, I just followed the rules they gave me. What?

So, here I am where I was in June. Only instead of $200 to get out of Sprint, it will cost me almost $600 to drop my “other” 2 lines. Which, quite frankly, I’m considering doing because I’m SO angry and so disappointed that the Sprint representatives were allowed to lie to me like this.

The problem is that I love the phone and am not a huge iPhone fan. But at what point do we as consumers say “enough is enough”? I guess I might be able to jailbreak the Palm Pre phones and move them to another carrier? I guess I have some research to do and figure out where to go from here. But I really really am upset. I don’t like being lied to. The worst part is that this whole thing could have been avoided back in June if they had just told me this up front. I could have made the decision to pay the $200 or not. The way they handled it now, I have no choice because NO ONE was honest about how it would be handled.

What’s interesting is that Palm is also losing a huge fan out of all of this. I’ve been using Palm products exclusively since they were, well, fancy moleskins! *laugh* And what about the investment I have in the Pre phones? I have 2 touchstones, 3 car chargers and tons of other accessories that yes, I BOUGHT FROM SPRINT STORES. I could have bought them online cheaper, but no. I go to the store because I know if there’s a problem, they will fix it. No questions asked. Easy. Done deal.

Heck, in fact, last night I was talking to a friends boyfriend telling him how fabulous the Pre is and Sprint is. ARGH! What? Am I now supposed to do like everyone else does with their phone plans and switch every 2 years? Does loyalty mean NOTHING to these folks? I joked when on my 10th anniversary with Sprint, they sent me little grip guards for my phone. It was funny, but it was a small “thank you” that meant something, at least I thought they recognized customer loyalty. Apparently not.

Sigh. Now what? What would YOU do? I really want to know… I don’t think it’s fair of me to break down and pay that $200. If I had known it in the first place, maybe. But at the same time, it seems silly to pay the $600 to get out of them all together, but they lied to me. And putting my trust in any company for 14 years and then being lied to, well that hurts.

Today started off pretty well…

Well, let’s back up… last week on Monday night Jamie ran a 99.8 fever. Low, but high enough that I kept him home on Tuesday to make sure we were complying with the districts 24-hour rule (oh, how I wish other parents would follow this rule but that’s a rant for another day). He didn’t run a fever all of Tuesday and was fine and hasn’t since, so I sent him to school the rest of the week with no problems. He’s had a cough for 3 weeks, but we all do, since the rain came and brought the mold or whatever with it, our allergies are crazy.

In the meantime, we talked the weekend before about his behavior in class, about how he’s not focusing and how he’s not paying attention and how to handle it when the class gets too loud for him to handle, etc. I also told him he should be striving to stay on green more often in class (they use a color system, green, purple, blue, red) and he needed to focus more, make sure he’s always paying attention to the teacher, not wandering off mentally, and we talked about ways that we could make that happen.

I was VERY proud when he got ALL GREEN last week. Honestly, I was hoping for one green day. To get 4 (he was home on Tuesday remember) was simply outstanding.

So, going to the conference (just me and him – Tom was home with Cassie and a friend), I knew it was going to be about him and how he’s progressed over the past 2 weeks. I went in there and looked at his desk and nearly cried. It was ORGANIZED. Jamie’s desk usually has papers shoved in there and you can’t find anything. But it was organized. I high-fived him and noticed he was acting off kilter. I thought maybe he was nervous or maybe being at school on Monday with no other kids was too weird or his schedule getting off (which wigs him out)… so we went on.

As we suspected, our son is super smart. He’s doing amazing in Math and can do word problems very easily, he’s above level in reading (duh), etc etc. Academically, he’s doing fine. Whew. His behavior in class has been outstanding recently, he was able to tell her when he needed to go to a different corner of the room to get away from the noisy classmates. His only problem is that he’s not very good at descriptive writing. He writes “I went to the park. We had fun. The end.” instead of “I went to the park with my sister and best friend. We dug in the sandbox with my yellow pail and went down the slide. My sister had fun jumping off of the swings.” etc. Okay, hey, we’ll take it.

Afterwards, he still looked out of it and said he wanted to talk to me, so I took him out for breakfast tacos. He seemed fine and was happy to get such a good report from his teacher (who I absolutely adore, I had reservations at first, but the woman has done amazing things with Jamie this year!). He was still kind of “out of it” but I am screwing with his schedule here and that makes him kinda nuts.

Let me pause here… those of you who are good mommies are already cringing thinking of all the people he’s come into contact with… the neighbor girl that spent the night, his sister, the friend that slept over (thankfully Jamie slept with me and had limited contact with the girls), everyone at the school, his teacher, the people at the restaurant.

Yeah, so at lunch, he didn’t eat but a few bites. Tom and I, being the rock star parents we are, were talking about how he just seemed to be off his “norm” today, must be the schedule thing, having a sleepover on Sunday and no school on Monday, right? All of a sudden, I look at Jamie and say, “oh, shit”. Yes, the lightbulb finally went off. He has 102.2 fever, has been dosed with Motrin and Robitussin and is quarantined in his room.

So, I think my mommy-of-the-year award won’t be coming any time soon. Darn it, after the great conference I was patting myself on the back. It would help if I don’t expose my sick kid to half of Austin though, eh? I wish he had said he felt bad, but he still says he just feels “tired”. ARGH!

Many thanks to Everitz Consulting (a great guy and old friend) and DuckDuckBlue (who fixes stuff I break on a regular basis)! Our website is now WordPress – and I take it was a HUGE pain in the butt to move over. Which means I get to play with themes. Which means that everything is going to be super duper wonky for a while.

Deal with it

Ooohh… Halloween themes!

This morning was not a good morning. I got up 10 minutes late. I’m annoyed. It’s raining. Tom tries to feed the kids pepper ham for lunch and I point out they don’t like pepper stuff and won’t eat it, so I’m annoyed I have to mix up the tuna fish and notice the stove and table were never wiped down after dinner, all that little stuff. So I’m double annoyed.

He leaves for school (substitute teacher) and the kids are IMPOSSIBLE. Not getting dressed, not brushing their hair. At one point I told them they could just walk to school in the rain and the next I told them “fine, we’re not going to school” (Jamie, of course, was down with that). Just a bad morning.

So, I come back and a friend is on Skype and I’m venting to her that while Tom is this great husband, he’s also a pain in the butt and I’m tired of being the one that always thinks of things ahead of time…

And then I get a text from Tom. “Look under ur keyboard”.

Where I find this letter – and $20. (click to see it cuz I’m not retyping it)

Bastard. He makes it so hard to stay mad at him! Dagnabit! *laugh*

Sigh. I think I’ll save the $20 and get us all Blizzards after the kids get their flu shots today. We all deserve them.

I guess at the end of the day, really the table and stove and all that stuff that annoys me when we forget is so minor…

I do want that maid though!

I get comments emailed to me so I know when someone comments here. I got a touching one to a 9/11 tribute I participated in back in 2006. I remember doing research on the NY fire fighter I was assigned. I was honored to learn more about him and be able to acknowledge him and his (not to mention his family’s) sacrifice on that day. I am even more honored that a friend of his found our blog and took time to share a few memories with me. Check it out here – http://www.beauchampfamily.com/2006/09/911-tribute-louis-arena-ladder-5-fdny.html. It’s interesting and I think that project touched me in ways I wasn’t expected. I still think of him when 9/11 comes around or someone mentions it. Thank you, Eddie, for taking the time. Louie sounds like he was a true friend to many.

I have no idea why, but our neighborhood gets an INSANE number of people knocking on my door trying to sell me everything from siding to meat to jesus. The poor siding guy did me in this morning, so after telling him to go away, I made this.

And yes, it really is hanging up. I wonder if it will work. I really really really really hope so. My sanity depends on it!

A few of my friends over in Houston are holding this Wine Conference. Looks to be really good food and wine there. I’m not really a wine drinker though, but love new and interesting foods. I wonder if they will laugh me out of there? I think it sounds fun actually. Hmmm… anyway, here’s some info. Any of my Amoms interested in a road trip? I wonder if us Austin girls can get kicked out of a wine thing? Hmmmm….

HOUSTON’S FIRST WINE CONFERENCE ARRIVES IN SEPTEMBER
Houston, TX – September 10, 2009 – Wine enthusiasts and foodies from around the country will converge on Houston September 26th for the highly anticipated Wine Conference. The event aims to connect people of all levels of knowledge and palates with experts in the fields of food and wine. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn from and mingle with key speakers in an intimate setting, taste dozens of wines from around the world, and sample food from Houston’s finest chefs.

The 2009 Wine Conference will showcase dozens of wines from countries including France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Israel, Argentina, Australia, Chile, Portugal, the U.S.A., and more. Wine makers and distributors pouring at this star-studded event include Virtuoso Selection, Fleischer Wines, Messina Hof, Salute!, Janco Beverage, American-Nordic, as well as several others to be announced.

Celebrity chefs include Iron Chef contestant Robert Gadsby (most recently of Bedford’s fame), James Beard award-nominated Monica Pope of t’afia, Food & Wine magazine’s “Best New American Chef” Scott Tycer and Plinio Sandalio of Textile, Randy Rucker of Rainbow Lodge, Carmelo Mauro of Carmelo’s, Jonathan Jones of Beavers, and Clive Berkman.

A key element of The Wine Conference will be the educational sessions held in an intimate venue. Conference tracks will feature wine luminaries Gary Vaynerchuck, founder and Host of Wine Library TV; Guy Stout, Master Sommelier, CWE; Denman Moody, Wine Writer and Critic; Shawn Dougherty, CSW, Sommelier, CSWE; and Richard Shaffer, of Israeli Wine Direct. Discussions will focus on wine today, old world vs. new world, origins of wine, sharing your passion, discovering your sense of taste, and where to start. Learn more about the speakers at
http://www.TheWineConference.com/category/speakers.

“We wanted to create a wine event on a more intimate scale that would focus on educating our attendees and allow them personal access to renowned experts”, said Wine Conference co-founder Geri Druckman. “The Wine Conference is a unique opportunity to experience the finest food and wine with leading experts in a fun, unpretentious environment.”

Tickets for the premier Wine Connoisseur track are $149 each; tickets for the Wine Enthusiast track are $85 each. Limited space is available. Find out more about the tracks and register today at http://www.TheWineConference.com/register.

Follow The Wine Conference on Twitter via @WineConference, sign up for the newsletter at
http://www.TheWineConference.com/newsletter, and stay current with the conference on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/WineConference. For more information about The 2009 Wine Conference, visit http://www.TheWineConference.com.

I thought this was a really creative idea. There’s a lady trying to save her house, so she started a Squidoo Lens about her plight and selling hats. She needs to sell 500 of them.

I thought it was such an interesting and fun idea that I’ve purchased 3 of them. 1 for each of my children and 1 that she has offered to donate to a charity of her choosing.

She even takes photos of them and puts them on her Flickr account.

For those of you that like doing random acts of kindness (and in this case, my kids have been asking for hats for this Winter anyway), stop her buy her Squidoo Page and Order a hat. I gave her very loose guidelines – let’s see what she comes up with for my kiddos!

Fun!