No offense, but if they lie to their customers then does it really shock you that they lie to the sales associates? Most of the answers I've gotten out of VZW are either outright lies or misinformation to make me go away. Like the time that the tech told me that I needed to turn my phone off while it charges so that it can "rest". I was trying to get my phone looked at it because the OS kept crashing while the phone was charging. They didn't want to deal with it, so I got the bullshit answer that any moron would accept.
so it makes sense to me that they wouldn't activate ESNs from other providers
Maybe they won't do it because that's their policy -- but there's no technical reason or regulation preventing them from doing so. Verizon's customer agreement specifically states that they don't care who you get the phone from -- as long as it's compatible with their network they will activate it. They went a step further with a friend of mine -- she had an Alltel branded phone and couldn't get her bluetooth earpiece to work. They troubleshooted it (and fixed the problem) even though it wasn't their phone and wasn't running their software. I hate Verizon for an assortment of reasons that I won't go into here but even I have to say that impressed me.
And if ETFs aren't for paying for phones and the commissions payed to the employees who sell them I don't know what they are for.
Oh, I'm sure that's part of the reason. But you can't deny that it makes a good excuse to lock customers in. Why is the ETF the same if I buy a cheap Nokia phone or the $1,000 PDA? Why is it the same if I buy direct from VZW or through a third party?
The prepaid was a joke, considering the outrageous prices.
Prepaid service in the US is nothing but a joke I'm afraid. When my VZW contract is up (I was foolish enough to sign a two year one -- never again) I honestly don't know what I'll do. I'll probably just stay month to month for the rest of my life, buying new phones on eBay when mine breaks. Or I'll dump them and get a landline. I've considered at that various times when they really tick me off but I like having the mobility.
Perhaps the Government will step in and force some real competition. Hey, it did with Ma Bell.
Unless your name is Stephen Colbert bears will usually just as soon leave you alone. Most of them you don't even know they are there because they go out of their way to avoid humans.
And I'll take a chance encounter with wildlife over straving to death any day.
FCC mandates that all phones sold in the US be programmed for their providers, so locked.
Care to find that regulation and provide it to us?
Also CDMA companies cannot activate phones with ESNs (Electronic Serial Numbers) from a different provider.
Says who? I have friends using Alltel phones on Verizon Wireless -- mainly because they couldn't stand the Verizon UI. All they had to do was unlock the phone, edit the PRL to join a Verizon tower and then activate it by adding the ESN to their account (VZW lets you do this for yourself) and dialing *228.
But if you unlock your GSM (Cingular or T-Mobile) feel free to pop in a SIM card from another provider, but hey still are going to at least give you a phone when you sign your contract.
And that's the whole point isn't it? These contracts and ETFs aren't about paying for the handsets. That's just what the industry wants us to think. They are about locking in the consumer. Why can't I pay the same rates without a contract if I'm willing to bring my own phone? Why do they charge $35 to activate a phone when all it involves is entering an ESN/programming a SIM card? It's a rip off. Plain and simple.
But hey, you could always go prepaid though.
Yeah, I'd much rather pay $0.10-$0.50/minute as opposed to the $0.016/minute that I pay for VZW (by the time you factor in mobile to mobile/N&W). Prepaid is useless in the US unless you only want the phone for emergencies and have another option (landline or VoIP) for the bulk of your calls. Personally, I'll pay for a landline, or a cell, but not both.
Remember that the cost of the phone is included in a contract, and that's why you get the termination fee if you cancel early. Even if you explicitly banned early termination fees, they would introduce fees for paying off the phone if you cancel the contract early that would be eerily similar to the termination fee. I guess it would be more explicit to the user though. Worse could be they keep the contract fees the same, but you have to pay in addition for your phone.
Bullshit! This is what they want you to think but that doesn't make it true.
I have the Motorola V325 phone. When I bought it cost me $79.99 after rebate with a two year contract. They are now giving them away. Literally. Or even better, buy one, get three free.
I find it very hard to believe that with the volumes they purchase that the phones cost a fraction of what they list as the "full retail price". The ETFs exist to lock in the consumer. End of story. If the ETF exists to pay for the phone then why can't I change my contract up or down (minutes wise) without extending it? Verizon used to let us do that -- so obviously it had nothing to do with the phone. Then they took it away.
As much as I'd love to read the article, and as informative and helpful as I'm sure it is, I can't help but wonder if an article that requires that you pay for it (not even a free registration option) has any place on Slashdot.
I had much the same thought but the reason I respect ConsumerReports is that they don't accept money from anybody except the consumer. Would you take this report as seriously if Verizon/T-Mobile/Alltel had provided them with the service and knew they were doing the testing ahead of time?
If you really want to see it without paying for it on the website then go down to your library. They should have a couple months worth of Consumer Reports magazines. This is how I researched my car before I bought it.
I personally carry an inexpensive Garmin GPS. An old-style one with a B&W LCD that cost me $70.00 US. It takes 2 AA batteries, and I always carry a spare 4 pack of those, plus more in my laptop bag. I NEVER travel without it, as I keep it in my Glove-Box and test it before every trip. That plus a laptop loaded with Google-earth, a 9 cell laptop battery and a power inverter to plug in with, and I just plain don't get lost. If I could afford it I would invest in a Garmin or Tom-Tom Nav system,but I don't have the $600.00 to spend on it.
You'd do better to carry some old blankets and sweaters (total cost:
If Kim had done this instead of trekking off into the wilderness he'd be alive today. Now all we can do is mourn him and try to learn from his mistakes.
Not to sound harsh but if he had bothered to carry the correct gear in his car then he'd still be alive today. I live in Upstate New York, where our winters are mild and we have civilization (compared to the Oregon wilderness) and I still make a point of carrying the following in my car during winter:
Blankets/sleeping bag (keep warm when you run out of gas/break down).
Shovel (dig the car out on your own)
Some candy bars (cheap source of carbs that don't go bad easily -- nothing tastes better then a two year old snickers bar when you are starving to death)
Water (obvious)
Flares (signal for help)
Matches and some fire starters.
Set of tools, jumper cables, etc, etc. All the stuff you need to fix minor problems yourself.
A good flashlight with a change of batteries.
Old pair of good boots (I won't be trekking through the woods in my dress shoes...)
Some other old clothes.... Anything you can toss in the car to dress in layers. I carry a couple of old sweaters, two pairs of socks and a pair of long johns.
An old backpack to carry all of your gear and enough food if you need to leave the car and find help.
Compass and maps.
I can fit all of this gear in my compact car without taking up too much room. I don't even live in anything that could be called wilderness and I still take these precautions. I'll have the supplies to wait for help and the gear to find it on my own/get into cell service range (without dying from exposure) should the need arise.
It's not accurate to one degree, but for getting un-lost, it's close enough.
Following water is always a decent bet too. Find a stream and follow it down-hill. Eventually you'll find a bigger stream, and eventually you'll find a river. What's built on/by rivers? Civilization.
If a professional cop breaks the law - the criminal goes free. That's just ass-backwards, and WORSE, it drives the public's sense that the system is broken, and that we should just do away with rights (instead of incompetent or crooked cops).
And who is going to charge the cop with breaking the law? The District Attorney? The same DA that eats lunch with the cops, tries their cases, relies on them to gather evidence and who just convicted a criminal because of the law breaking cop? You don't see a problem here?
I'm as disgusted as anyone when the cops screw up (and make no mistake -- more often then not it's an honest screw-up and not a deliberate violation of the law) but allowing evidence illegally obtained to be used against defendants is a slippery slope.
Ofcourse this just might be a scandinavian thing as we generally don't think that our governments require any extra effort to keep them in line, they seem to do quite well on their own.
Americans by in large don't trust our Government. Part of that is a product of recent times but it's also rooted in our history. Our Founding Fathers overthrew an oppressive Government that denied citizens the basic rights that they were supposed to have. For this reason they were disinclined to be trusting of any Government -- even one that they themselves setup.
It's quite an impressive feat actually. George Washington could have been a dictator for life and he willingly gave up power. How many modern, revolutionaries can say that? How many of them have voluntarily given up power?
I also know that it's possible that with the right lawyer he could get away with murder on a technicality. That would not be right, but it's not like it hasn't happened before.
Those technicalities that everybody hates so much are what keeps our Government in line. If the police screw up and overstep a warrant or "forget" to Mirandize a suspect then that evidence should be thrown out.
If defendants couldn't win on "technicalities" then what incentive does the Government have to follow the rules?
Let's see them get hit with a $1 billion dollar class action lawsuite from a team of high power ambulance chasers.
They'll settle it for $10,000,000. 99.5% of that will go to the lawyers. The remaining 0.5% will go to the administrative costs of mailing out all the iTunes coupons to the class members.
Which is why your health care system is so damn expensive.
I'll take expensive and good over cheap and lousy any day of the week.
Did you even bother to read the GPs post? The doctor screwed up. Plain and simple. He should be held accountable. The GP wasn't advocating a massive "pain and suffering" settlement. But if his screw-up winds up costing you more money to fix in the long run then why shouldn't he be held to account for that?
If I fuck up a $100 repair job on your car and it winds up costing $1,500 to fix my mistake who should pay that? Why should you have to pay? I'm the one who screwed up.
I felt that he should sue the doctor on principle, if only to teach him a lesson. Certainly I think the doctor or the docs malpractice insurance should have paid the incresed medical fees, rather than T's insurance
In the United States that would probably be cause enough for T's insurance company to sue the original doctor. They shouldn't have to pay for his screwups. It's not even unique to medical insurance. When a friend of mine was hit by an un-insured driver and put in the hospital his car insurance covered his medical bills and all that. Then they promptly sued the un-insured driver for every single penny they had to spend. The theory being that if he had insurance (as the law requires) his insurance company would have wound up paying.
Simple enough. I make a lot of international calls, and rates on all cell providers are ridiculous. However, even without this argument, it does make a lot of sense. E.g. I get the pre-paid plan for a cell phone at the 5$ per month per phone, and use it only for emergencies. And I get the vonage unlimited plan for 25$ a month. Between me and my wife, we spend 35$ a month for phone costs and can have unlimited calls everywhere in the US, CA, UK, IT, FR, IR and ES. If only they would include HR in the flat-rate list...:-)
I can see it for the international calling. I've made one international call in my entire life -- it was to a cell phone in the UK to tell a friend of mine (who was traveling) about a change in plans (was going out there to meet her). I didn't have any sort of international long distance on my POTS line. Verizon charged me something like $8.00 for the privilege of making that two minute phone call! Miserable greedy bastards.
The cell works well enough for me. A large portion of my friends have VZW phones (i.e: free to call them) and the smallest plan that they offer leaves me with 20-22 peak minutes a day. It's amazing how many of your calls you can shift to after 9pm or on weekends when "free" is a driving factor.
Also, there are other reasons to keep a POTS line. Emergencies, for one thing. The POTS network is (or is supposed to be) a hell of a lot more reliable and resilient than the mobile network. I keep one dumb line-powered phone specifically for when things go wrong, and I used it two days ago when there was a major power cut. The mobile network would have worked, of course, but if something really bad happens, the mobile network will almost certainly crash.
You'll brook no argument from me on this point. My background is in telecommunications and I appreciate the redundancy of the POTS network. I did not want to give up my POTS line but it was hard to justify keeping it for emergencies when I was using my cell phone for 95% of my calls. Between taxes and surcharges the POTS line was costing me $30/mo ($360/yr) and I wasn't even using it. I did take advantage of getting rid of it and port my POTS number to my cell phone. As a result I have an older exchange (and one that doesn't look like a mobile) on my phone -- which I think is cool (though non-telco people couldn't care less) and I'll have this number forever.
If I had kids or a family I'd keep a POTS line around. But I figure that for just me, if the emergency is bad enough that it knocks out the cell networks, I'll probably have bigger things to worry about and won't be calling anybody anyway. If I do need to call somebody my landlord would be more then happy to let me use his phone -- or for $0.50 there's a pay phone down the street. I was glad that I invested in a car charger. During our recent floods we lost power for five days. I never got flooded but if I hadn't had the car charger my cell battery would have died and I would have been cut off.
The one thing I don't understand is why people would go the VoIP or cable phone route. You lose both the mobility of a cell phone and the bullet-proof reliability of POTS service. To each their own I suppose.
Yes, and that obviously works for you. But it wouldn't work for me, because I only use my mobile for three minutes a month, which means I'd end up paying $13/minute on your tariff.
Fair enough, and I'll grant you that Europe seems to have better pre-paid plans then we do, plus I rather like the idea of just buying a phone and then buying service (as opposed to getting a crippled phone from your provider) for that phone.
But, then, do you really just spend three minutes a month on the phone or do you have a landline to backup that mobile? Because in my situation it was cheaper to dump the landline and rely on the mobile. In fact the mobile winds up being cheaper because there's no long distance charges. I'm wondering if such a thing would be cost effective over on your side of the pond or do people keep their POTS service?
Because it uses more resources to call them over the cell phone network than it does over the POTS network?
If you are going to follow that logic then what's the problem with billing for incoming calls? You are using airtime, which is theoretically a limited resource (only so many active calls per base station at a time), so why shouldn't you pay for incoming minutes?
I don't really have an issue with being billed for incoming calls because I have the choice about answering them. Being billed for incoming SMS messages, well, that just pisses me off to no end, because I don't have a choice. My phone just receives them.
In any case, I'll take most post-paid American cell phone plans over their European equivs any day of the week. You know the reason why SMS isn't as popular over here in the states as it is in the rest of the world is because of the ridiculously cheap cost of minutes in the US, right? Between mobile to mobile, nights and weekends and peak minutes I used 2,555 minutes last month (445 peak, 600 M2M, 1510 N&W). I have the cheapest plan that my provider offers: $39.99/mo. That translates into $0.015 per minute. And that's it! No long distance, no roaming, no nothing. One and a half cents per minute. I'm not going to complain about that.
Don't even get me started on how WiFi was pushed into a small band shared with microwave ovens...
Don't get me started on how they are pushing for the shutdown of analog TV and the replacement with digital just so they can auction off the spectrum. Or how they tried to force the broadcast flag on all of us.
Seriously, if Congress is going to delegate that kind of power then I damn well better be able to vote for the people running the place. Oh, I can't? What do you mean they are just a bunch of unelected bureaucrats?
T-Mobile uses the GSM cellular protocol, which is the best, by far, and is used throughout Europe and most of the world. If you plan to travel to other countries, you will need a quad-band phone like the Motorola Razr V3.
Are you sure about that? GSM is the open protocol, which by default makes me respect it some more, but CDMA has several compelling advantages. Higher density of users per site, continuous transmission instead of time division (ever held a GSM phone near a speaker?) and in my experience CDMA performs better in marginal signal areas then GSM does. That may not mean much to you in Europe or if you live in an urban area, but out where I live that's huge.
In any case, I'd love to dump big red (VZW) for T-Mobile, based on T-Mobiles reputation for customer service, the fact that they will unlock my phone and the fact that they told the NSA to go to hell when they were compiling the calls database. Unfortunately T-Mobile has no signal where I live. They also broke up with Catherine, in favor of a "new re-branding strategy". Yeah, whose bright idea was that? I was told that I'd get to sleep with her if I signed a ten year contract. *sigh*
In all seriousness though, T-Mobile is about the only provider that I have any respect for. VZW has you by the balls and knows it (best coverage), Cingular customer service sucks and Sprint doesn't have good coverage (where I am). All hail the free market! Between the three of them I see very little price differences and the only compelling feature is Sprints nights & weekends which start at 7 instead of 9.
(We don't have the bizarre USian concept of charging people to receive incoming calls.)
No, they just charge people who call you more for the privilege of calling a mobile number, even though he could be sitting in the same building as you.
In America the person calling you is billed based on where your cellular exchange is. It could be a local call or it could be on the other side of the country. This seems a little bit more fair -- why should I pay a surcharge to call somebody who lives next door to me just because they have a cell phone?
Or are you just venting frustration with the situation in general?
That was the idea.
Though I'd also suggest (and did) that technological solutions to this problem are basically self-defeating in the long run. It just makes it an arms race between server admins and spammers (build a better mousetrap and....) and the losers are the end users. It would seem that a legislative solution of some sort would be in order though I honestly have no idea where to begin on one.
Everybody delivers e-mail messages through the SMTP server of their ISP. What is wrong with that?
I could start with the obvious (what happens if I'm not on their network and they use IP based rules?) and go to the paranoid (why let my isp compile a log of who I send e-mail to?) but it's not really the point. My point was that you used to be able to do this. You no longer can. That represents a loss of functionality in my book.
Gmail is the only service that works. The success rate has risen to about 99.5% for me - rejecting 150 to 250 spams per day out of 30 or so legit emails, one or two spams get through per day, and no false positives, ever.
No false positives ever? Are you sure about that? Mine has done quite a few false positives. Usually two or three liner e-mails from people that I've given my business card to (i.e: they've never e-mailed me before and aren't in my address book/whitelist) that consist of "Hey, it was nice meeting you, give a call sometime (xxx)xxx-xxxx".
While I can see how such a message might trigger a spam detection it's still a false positive in my book. And it's usually buried in so much real spam that I don't find out about it until they call me and say "Why are you ignoring my e-mail?"
Gmail will always be better.
Dunno about that. I like it because I can access my e-mail from anywhere. I don't like their privacy policy or the fact that my e-mail will probably be around Google (in one shape or another) forever. But that's another discussion.
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I am just quoting my training.
No offense, but if they lie to their customers then does it really shock you that they lie to the sales associates? Most of the answers I've gotten out of VZW are either outright lies or misinformation to make me go away. Like the time that the tech told me that I needed to turn my phone off while it charges so that it can "rest". I was trying to get my phone looked at it because the OS kept crashing while the phone was charging. They didn't want to deal with it, so I got the bullshit answer that any moron would accept.
so it makes sense to me that they wouldn't activate ESNs from other providers
Maybe they won't do it because that's their policy -- but there's no technical reason or regulation preventing them from doing so. Verizon's customer agreement specifically states that they don't care who you get the phone from -- as long as it's compatible with their network they will activate it. They went a step further with a friend of mine -- she had an Alltel branded phone and couldn't get her bluetooth earpiece to work. They troubleshooted it (and fixed the problem) even though it wasn't their phone and wasn't running their software. I hate Verizon for an assortment of reasons that I won't go into here but even I have to say that impressed me.
And if ETFs aren't for paying for phones and the commissions payed to the employees who sell them I don't know what they are for.
Oh, I'm sure that's part of the reason. But you can't deny that it makes a good excuse to lock customers in. Why is the ETF the same if I buy a cheap Nokia phone or the $1,000 PDA? Why is it the same if I buy direct from VZW or through a third party?
The prepaid was a joke, considering the outrageous prices.
Prepaid service in the US is nothing but a joke I'm afraid. When my VZW contract is up (I was foolish enough to sign a two year one -- never again) I honestly don't know what I'll do. I'll probably just stay month to month for the rest of my life, buying new phones on eBay when mine breaks. Or I'll dump them and get a landline. I've considered at that various times when they really tick me off but I like having the mobility.
Perhaps the Government will step in and force some real competition. Hey, it did with Ma Bell.
Bears?
Unless your name is Stephen Colbert bears will usually just as soon leave you alone. Most of them you don't even know they are there because they go out of their way to avoid humans.
And I'll take a chance encounter with wildlife over straving to death any day.
FCC mandates that all phones sold in the US be programmed for their providers, so locked.
Care to find that regulation and provide it to us?
Also CDMA companies cannot activate phones with ESNs (Electronic Serial Numbers) from a different provider.
Says who? I have friends using Alltel phones on Verizon Wireless -- mainly because they couldn't stand the Verizon UI. All they had to do was unlock the phone, edit the PRL to join a Verizon tower and then activate it by adding the ESN to their account (VZW lets you do this for yourself) and dialing *228.
But if you unlock your GSM (Cingular or T-Mobile) feel free to pop in a SIM card from another provider, but hey still are going to at least give you a phone when you sign your contract.
And that's the whole point isn't it? These contracts and ETFs aren't about paying for the handsets. That's just what the industry wants us to think. They are about locking in the consumer. Why can't I pay the same rates without a contract if I'm willing to bring my own phone? Why do they charge $35 to activate a phone when all it involves is entering an ESN/programming a SIM card? It's a rip off. Plain and simple.
But hey, you could always go prepaid though.
Yeah, I'd much rather pay $0.10-$0.50/minute as opposed to the $0.016/minute that I pay for VZW (by the time you factor in mobile to mobile/N&W). Prepaid is useless in the US unless you only want the phone for emergencies and have another option (landline or VoIP) for the bulk of your calls. Personally, I'll pay for a landline, or a cell, but not both.
Remember that the cost of the phone is included in a contract, and that's why you get the termination fee if you cancel early. Even if you explicitly banned early termination fees, they would introduce fees for paying off the phone if you cancel the contract early that would be eerily similar to the termination fee. I guess it would be more explicit to the user though. Worse could be they keep the contract fees the same, but you have to pay in addition for your phone.
Bullshit! This is what they want you to think but that doesn't make it true.
I have the Motorola V325 phone. When I bought it cost me $79.99 after rebate with a two year contract. They are now giving them away. Literally. Or even better, buy one, get three free.
I find it very hard to believe that with the volumes they purchase that the phones cost a fraction of what they list as the "full retail price". The ETFs exist to lock in the consumer. End of story. If the ETF exists to pay for the phone then why can't I change my contract up or down (minutes wise) without extending it? Verizon used to let us do that -- so obviously it had nothing to do with the phone. Then they took it away.
This is about lock-in. Plain and simple.
As much as I'd love to read the article, and as informative and helpful as I'm sure it is, I can't help but wonder if an article that requires that you pay for it (not even a free registration option) has any place on Slashdot.
I had much the same thought but the reason I respect ConsumerReports is that they don't accept money from anybody except the consumer. Would you take this report as seriously if Verizon/T-Mobile/Alltel had provided them with the service and knew they were doing the testing ahead of time?
If you really want to see it without paying for it on the website then go down to your library. They should have a couple months worth of Consumer Reports magazines. This is how I researched my car before I bought it.
I personally carry an inexpensive Garmin GPS. An old-style one with a B&W LCD that cost me $70.00 US. It takes 2 AA batteries, and I always carry a spare 4 pack of those, plus more in my laptop bag. I NEVER travel without it, as I keep it in my Glove-Box and test it before every trip. That plus a laptop loaded with Google-earth, a 9 cell laptop battery and a power inverter to plug in with, and I just plain don't get lost. If I could afford it I would invest in a Garmin or Tom-Tom Nav system,but I don't have the $600.00 to spend on it.
You'd do better to carry some old blankets and sweaters (total cost:
If Kim had done this instead of trekking off into the wilderness he'd be alive today. Now all we can do is mourn him and try to learn from his mistakes.
Not to sound harsh but if he had bothered to carry the correct gear in his car then he'd still be alive today. I live in Upstate New York, where our winters are mild and we have civilization (compared to the Oregon wilderness) and I still make a point of carrying the following in my car during winter:
I can fit all of this gear in my compact car without taking up too much room. I don't even live in anything that could be called wilderness and I still take these precautions. I'll have the supplies to wait for help and the gear to find it on my own/get into cell service range (without dying from exposure) should the need arise.
It's not accurate to one degree, but for getting un-lost, it's close enough.
Following water is always a decent bet too. Find a stream and follow it down-hill. Eventually you'll find a bigger stream, and eventually you'll find a river. What's built on/by rivers? Civilization.
If a professional cop breaks the law - the criminal goes free. That's just ass-backwards, and WORSE, it drives the public's sense that the system is broken, and that we should just do away with rights (instead of incompetent or crooked cops).
And who is going to charge the cop with breaking the law? The District Attorney? The same DA that eats lunch with the cops, tries their cases, relies on them to gather evidence and who just convicted a criminal because of the law breaking cop? You don't see a problem here?
I'm as disgusted as anyone when the cops screw up (and make no mistake -- more often then not it's an honest screw-up and not a deliberate violation of the law) but allowing evidence illegally obtained to be used against defendants is a slippery slope.
Ofcourse this just might be a scandinavian thing as we generally don't think that our governments require any extra effort to keep them in line, they seem to do quite well on their own.
Americans by in large don't trust our Government. Part of that is a product of recent times but it's also rooted in our history. Our Founding Fathers overthrew an oppressive Government that denied citizens the basic rights that they were supposed to have. For this reason they were disinclined to be trusting of any Government -- even one that they themselves setup.
It's quite an impressive feat actually. George Washington could have been a dictator for life and he willingly gave up power. How many modern, revolutionaries can say that? How many of them have voluntarily given up power?
I also know that it's possible that with the right lawyer he could get away with murder on a technicality. That would not be right, but it's not like it hasn't happened before.
Those technicalities that everybody hates so much are what keeps our Government in line. If the police screw up and overstep a warrant or "forget" to Mirandize a suspect then that evidence should be thrown out.
If defendants couldn't win on "technicalities" then what incentive does the Government have to follow the rules?
He's a guy who apparently owned neither a GPS NOR a 406 EPIRB.
They weren't out hiking in the wilderness as I understand it. They drove down a closed seasonal road by mistake and got stuck.
Do you carry an EPIRB in your car? I know that I don't.
Let's see them get hit with a $1 billion dollar class action lawsuite from a team of high power ambulance chasers.
They'll settle it for $10,000,000. 99.5% of that will go to the lawyers. The remaining 0.5% will go to the administrative costs of mailing out all the iTunes coupons to the class members.
Call me cynical.
Which is why your health care system is so damn expensive.
I'll take expensive and good over cheap and lousy any day of the week.
Did you even bother to read the GPs post? The doctor screwed up. Plain and simple. He should be held accountable. The GP wasn't advocating a massive "pain and suffering" settlement. But if his screw-up winds up costing you more money to fix in the long run then why shouldn't he be held to account for that?
If I fuck up a $100 repair job on your car and it winds up costing $1,500 to fix my mistake who should pay that? Why should you have to pay? I'm the one who screwed up.
I felt that he should sue the doctor on principle, if only to teach him a lesson. Certainly I think the doctor or the docs malpractice insurance should have paid the incresed medical fees, rather than T's insurance
In the United States that would probably be cause enough for T's insurance company to sue the original doctor. They shouldn't have to pay for his screwups. It's not even unique to medical insurance. When a friend of mine was hit by an un-insured driver and put in the hospital his car insurance covered his medical bills and all that. Then they promptly sued the un-insured driver for every single penny they had to spend. The theory being that if he had insurance (as the law requires) his insurance company would have wound up paying.
Simple enough. I make a lot of international calls, and rates on all cell providers are ridiculous. However, even without this argument, it does make a lot of sense. E.g. I get the pre-paid plan for a cell phone at the 5$ per month per phone, and use it only for emergencies. And I get the vonage unlimited plan for 25$ a month. Between me and my wife, we spend 35$ a month for phone costs and can have unlimited calls everywhere in the US, CA, UK, IT, FR, IR and ES. If only they would include HR in the flat-rate list... :-)
I can see it for the international calling. I've made one international call in my entire life -- it was to a cell phone in the UK to tell a friend of mine (who was traveling) about a change in plans (was going out there to meet her). I didn't have any sort of international long distance on my POTS line. Verizon charged me something like $8.00 for the privilege of making that two minute phone call! Miserable greedy bastards.
The cell works well enough for me. A large portion of my friends have VZW phones (i.e: free to call them) and the smallest plan that they offer leaves me with 20-22 peak minutes a day. It's amazing how many of your calls you can shift to after 9pm or on weekends when "free" is a driving factor.
Also, there are other reasons to keep a POTS line. Emergencies, for one thing. The POTS network is (or is supposed to be) a hell of a lot more reliable and resilient than the mobile network. I keep one dumb line-powered phone specifically for when things go wrong, and I used it two days ago when there was a major power cut. The mobile network would have worked, of course, but if something really bad happens, the mobile network will almost certainly crash.
You'll brook no argument from me on this point. My background is in telecommunications and I appreciate the redundancy of the POTS network. I did not want to give up my POTS line but it was hard to justify keeping it for emergencies when I was using my cell phone for 95% of my calls. Between taxes and surcharges the POTS line was costing me $30/mo ($360/yr) and I wasn't even using it. I did take advantage of getting rid of it and port my POTS number to my cell phone. As a result I have an older exchange (and one that doesn't look like a mobile) on my phone -- which I think is cool (though non-telco people couldn't care less) and I'll have this number forever.
If I had kids or a family I'd keep a POTS line around. But I figure that for just me, if the emergency is bad enough that it knocks out the cell networks, I'll probably have bigger things to worry about and won't be calling anybody anyway. If I do need to call somebody my landlord would be more then happy to let me use his phone -- or for $0.50 there's a pay phone down the street. I was glad that I invested in a car charger. During our recent floods we lost power for five days. I never got flooded but if I hadn't had the car charger my cell battery would have died and I would have been cut off.
The one thing I don't understand is why people would go the VoIP or cable phone route. You lose both the mobility of a cell phone and the bullet-proof reliability of POTS service. To each their own I suppose.
Yes, and that obviously works for you. But it wouldn't work for me, because I only use my mobile for three minutes a month, which means I'd end up paying $13/minute on your tariff.
Fair enough, and I'll grant you that Europe seems to have better pre-paid plans then we do, plus I rather like the idea of just buying a phone and then buying service (as opposed to getting a crippled phone from your provider) for that phone.
But, then, do you really just spend three minutes a month on the phone or do you have a landline to backup that mobile? Because in my situation it was cheaper to dump the landline and rely on the mobile. In fact the mobile winds up being cheaper because there's no long distance charges. I'm wondering if such a thing would be cost effective over on your side of the pond or do people keep their POTS service?
Because it uses more resources to call them over the cell phone network than it does over the POTS network?
If you are going to follow that logic then what's the problem with billing for incoming calls? You are using airtime, which is theoretically a limited resource (only so many active calls per base station at a time), so why shouldn't you pay for incoming minutes?
I don't really have an issue with being billed for incoming calls because I have the choice about answering them. Being billed for incoming SMS messages, well, that just pisses me off to no end, because I don't have a choice. My phone just receives them.
In any case, I'll take most post-paid American cell phone plans over their European equivs any day of the week. You know the reason why SMS isn't as popular over here in the states as it is in the rest of the world is because of the ridiculously cheap cost of minutes in the US, right? Between mobile to mobile, nights and weekends and peak minutes I used 2,555 minutes last month (445 peak, 600 M2M, 1510 N&W). I have the cheapest plan that my provider offers: $39.99/mo. That translates into $0.015 per minute. And that's it! No long distance, no roaming, no nothing. One and a half cents per minute. I'm not going to complain about that.
Don't even get me started on how WiFi was pushed into a small band shared with microwave ovens...
Don't get me started on how they are pushing for the shutdown of analog TV and the replacement with digital just so they can auction off the spectrum. Or how they tried to force the broadcast flag on all of us.
Seriously, if Congress is going to delegate that kind of power then I damn well better be able to vote for the people running the place. Oh, I can't? What do you mean they are just a bunch of unelected bureaucrats?
T-Mobile uses the GSM cellular protocol, which is the best, by far, and is used throughout Europe and most of the world. If you plan to travel to other countries, you will need a quad-band phone like the Motorola Razr V3.
Are you sure about that? GSM is the open protocol, which by default makes me respect it some more, but CDMA has several compelling advantages. Higher density of users per site, continuous transmission instead of time division (ever held a GSM phone near a speaker?) and in my experience CDMA performs better in marginal signal areas then GSM does. That may not mean much to you in Europe or if you live in an urban area, but out where I live that's huge.
In any case, I'd love to dump big red (VZW) for T-Mobile, based on T-Mobiles reputation for customer service, the fact that they will unlock my phone and the fact that they told the NSA to go to hell when they were compiling the calls database. Unfortunately T-Mobile has no signal where I live. They also broke up with Catherine, in favor of a "new re-branding strategy". Yeah, whose bright idea was that? I was told that I'd get to sleep with her if I signed a ten year contract. *sigh*
In all seriousness though, T-Mobile is about the only provider that I have any respect for. VZW has you by the balls and knows it (best coverage), Cingular customer service sucks and Sprint doesn't have good coverage (where I am). All hail the free market! Between the three of them I see very little price differences and the only compelling feature is Sprints nights & weekends which start at 7 instead of 9.
(We don't have the bizarre USian concept of charging people to receive incoming calls.)
No, they just charge people who call you more for the privilege of calling a mobile number, even though he could be sitting in the same building as you.
In America the person calling you is billed based on where your cellular exchange is. It could be a local call or it could be on the other side of the country. This seems a little bit more fair -- why should I pay a surcharge to call somebody who lives next door to me just because they have a cell phone?
Or are you just venting frustration with the situation in general?
That was the idea.
Though I'd also suggest (and did) that technological solutions to this problem are basically self-defeating in the long run. It just makes it an arms race between server admins and spammers (build a better mousetrap and....) and the losers are the end users. It would seem that a legislative solution of some sort would be in order though I honestly have no idea where to begin on one.
Everybody delivers e-mail messages through the SMTP server of their ISP. What is wrong with that?
I could start with the obvious (what happens if I'm not on their network and they use IP based rules?) and go to the paranoid (why let my isp compile a log of who I send e-mail to?) but it's not really the point. My point was that you used to be able to do this. You no longer can. That represents a loss of functionality in my book.
Gmail is the only service that works. The success rate has risen to about 99.5% for me - rejecting 150 to 250 spams per day out of 30 or so legit emails, one or two spams get through per day, and no false positives, ever.
No false positives ever? Are you sure about that? Mine has done quite a few false positives. Usually two or three liner e-mails from people that I've given my business card to (i.e: they've never e-mailed me before and aren't in my address book/whitelist) that consist of "Hey, it was nice meeting you, give a call sometime (xxx)xxx-xxxx".
While I can see how such a message might trigger a spam detection it's still a false positive in my book. And it's usually buried in so much real spam that I don't find out about it until they call me and say "Why are you ignoring my e-mail?"
Gmail will always be better.
Dunno about that. I like it because I can access my e-mail from anywhere. I don't like their privacy policy or the fact that my e-mail will probably be around Google (in one shape or another) forever. But that's another discussion.