mamajoan

I got my new cellphone. First I had to bitch at the manager guy about the whole brand loyalty thing. He explained that they actually lose money on me, and everyone else who's on the $20/month plan (which they no longer offer, for exactly that reason), and thus they do indeed treat me like, or worse than, a new customer because unless I want to upgrade my plan, they're going to continue losing money on me.

Well, that was certainly at least partly him trying to sell me, but it does make sense. No cellphone carrier that I can see offers a $20 plan any more, so it's probably true that it isn't cost-effective for T-Mobile, and hence they have no incentive to offer *me* any incentives to stick with it.

So, the upshot of it all is that I ended up signing a new 2-year contract and getting the phone that I wanted for free. well, free plus $25 for a car charger, but still.

I pondered it at length on my way in there, and decided that the odds of me having good reason to leave T-Mobile within one year are tiny, and within two years, it's so hard to know because who knows what'll happen in my life? But the $20/month plan has worked for me for seven or so years now, so I think it's unlikely to suddenly stop working for me. And anyway I can always upgrade my plan (although that involves an additional one-year commitment, but if I do it within the span of my 2-year contract, that can be moot).

So now I have a shiny new phone. It's so cute and light and sparkly. It's not really THAT much less heavy than my old one, but it's smaller and "feels" a lot lighter. Plus, it's a cool Star-Trek-y flip phone, which I realize basically everyone has now so it's not the big deal that it was four years ago, but still.

Now I just have to decide whether I want to spend another $2.50 to download the Imperial Death March, snif snif.