Adventures by Cellphone

This week the RantFamily, RantMom, RantWoman and Little Sister, Brother-in-law and Irrepressible Nephew are trying to migrate our cellphone plans from Qwest to Verizon. If this were turning out to be simple, there would be no entry in RantWoman's log of amazing adventures. Recent FTC-related stories about blogger compensation aside, if RantWoman were a more competent capitalist she might figure out some way to get paid for this marketing insight. Any telco wanting to offer RantWoman compensation for this increment of free consulting would be gratefully entertained.

The family objectives:

--Cheap and easy are never bad things.

--RantMom especially wants to save money. RantWoman and RantMom have independently learned, RantWoman in person and RantMom by phone in the course of another customer service encounter that RantMom can probably just go to a Verizon store, exchange phones and wind up with a cheaper plan. RantWoman is so excited to have gotten the same information two different ways, she is almost ready to believe it.

--We all want unlimited minutes, probably via the same provider, to call each other up, make plans, check in, get in each other's faces, nag, whine, and do all those other things families do with their cellphone time. As far as RantWoman is concerned, this probably means her recent comical visit to the AT&T store is beside the point. RantWoman wanted to try all the accessibility features of the new iPhone 3GS, but none of the staff at the store knew how to turn them on and RantWoman had not thought to read up in advance.

--RantWoman is torn about a smart phone, a netbook, or other options, but she is darned well determined that whatever she does will be more accessible to her than her current model. Quaintly, RantWoman is also entertaining rich fantasies of being able to walk into a store somewhere easy to get to, speak to a human and put her hands on more than one device to try them out before purchasing. RantWoman suspects that fantasizing about that phone call from the Nobel Committee or the MacArthur genius grants would be more realistic.

--RantWoman and Little Sister suspect without asking RantMom that the idea of poring over some marketing pamphlet full of tiny print and pictures of inscrutable gizmos would really not charm RantMom. RantWoman further suspects that although RantMom is very, very budget conscious right now, if someone offered her a cellphone camera and a simple way to manage the content, RantMom probably would go ga-ga over the opportunity to snap photos of her family at every opportunity. RantWoman is filing that suspicion with the "just buy a digital camera instead" thought, especially since RantMom would then also have to accelerate her "upgrade computer" thoughts too. Sigh.

--Little Sister is into the marketing pamphlet, but RantWoman demands to be able to review equivalent content on the web with her assistive technology. Silly RantWoman started out at http://www.verizon.com/ which turned out to have a few interesting bits related to different disabilities but absolutely nothing RantWoman found on the home page that would point the lost to http://www.verizonwireless.com/ . RantWoman suspects the latter is really what she needs.

--RantWoman has a whole bunch of blindness listserves, software companies, blogs reviews, equipment lists and other information firehoses she can try to pore through. RantWoman is, well, a little lazy. She just wants to go all Captain Picard on the situation. RantWoman just wants to say "Make it so" and have a new cellphone and preferred plan delived to her door by next-day mail if necessary!

--As long as RantWoman is flirting with impossible requirements, she will note comments related to a recent Candidates' Forum on Issues of Interest to People with Disabilities. See http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/10/candidates-forum.html

The Mayoral segment had an interesting exchange about broadband technologies. One candidate is a big advocate of a citywide broadband utility. The other talked about how he was a great competent capitalist marketing cellphone service to poor people. The second one also responded to one question with a question of his own about whether telecommunications technology would ease access specifically for deaf people needing interpretation.

Neither candidate showed any awareness of how much it typically costs to go the last few feet as far as accessibility features on different cellphones, smart phones, netbooks. Unfortunately the forum format did not allow for any kind of further followup about the topic. Also, although the forums feature many kinds of comments about transportation issues, not a single candidate wandered near the question of whether with good broadband infrastructure, the people of WA might be able to maintain a high standard of living without groaning under more transportation costs.Think of all the access devices from computers to phones that would need upgrades and service too!