So what all happened with my new phone, and a few other things…

Ok, so I had my nice shiny new HTC Sensation 4g, and all was well, as I had posted previously. I got the phone on Saturday, and I was told that T-Mobile’s system was down, and my sale/contract renewal was done with an ‘off-line’ sale. The clerk went over all of the terms with me, I thought, and my boss was there to provide his credit card (the promotion at the time was that the phones were free after rebate, and my boss would simply get the rebate). I took the phones and then left the T-Mobile store.

The first red flag should’ve been raised the following Sunday. I got a call from the T-Mobile store saying they had charged my boss’s credit card the wrong amount, and would actually be charging it for $20 more than what was supposed to be the charge, I thought. But due to my erratic work schedule, I wasn’t able to get back to the store till the ensuing Wednesday. I get there and the manager pulls out my paperwork and hands it to me. I then saw that not only was I on a two year contract, but I was also on an equipment installment plan, which no one had said anything to me before! So, not only was on a contract, but I was going to pay full price anyway. The next Saturday, I returned my phones. I had my HTC Sensation 4g for only one week. When I returned my phones, I was told that I had to pay a $50 restocking fee per phone. I simply told the clerk that I would eat the loss.

What happened here was fundamentally wrong on a few points.

• The amount charged to the credit card was changed ex post facto. This was my boss’s credit card, and he sure wasn’t happy when he found out about this.
• I had to sign a contract without actually seeing it, let alone the fine print. IIRC this is illegal, and I should probably report this to the state Attorney General’s office. This is a real sticking point, because:
• The terms were either changed ex post facto, or the clerk failed to tell me about it (in fact, the clerk who handled my return said that it appeared that this was most likely). It doesn’t matter to me. I see no between malice and incompetence.

So, being a reader of The Consumerist, I knew what had to happen. I deployed an Executive Email Carpet Bomb (something I’ve had to do before, with Pierce Transit). A couple of days later, I got a call from Christopher Lowe at T-Mobile. Basically, he said T-Mobile was right, I was wrong, but he was going to offer to credit my account for the restocking fee in question. I declined. I don’t need to fucking freebie if you’re going to talk down to me. Having checked my account online prior to the call, I also saw that my phone line was still under contract, even though I had already returned the phones. I made sure that he set my account as not under contract. I hung up, and I thought I might still give T-Mobile a chance.

While all this was happening, I talked to my brother about switching to Sprint. The day after I got off the phone with Christopher Lowe, Philip and I were in Puyallup to celebrate our parents’ birthdays when we came by a Sprint store. We went in, and picked our phones out, and at this time Philip told me that when I talked to T-Mobile executive care, his data service was cut off. That was enough for me. I dumped T-mobile. My brother got an iPhone 4s, and I got an HTC EVO 3D. Basically, a Sensation but with a different radio, and 3-D camera.

T-Mobile is a royal cluster-fuck when it comes to customer service. There were at least two (possibly three) occasions where T-Mobile could’ve kept my business. All they had to do was not be total incompetent clods. I’m now starting to get collection calls from T-Mobile about my last balance. I’ll probably pay it. But I think a complaint to the FTC and the state attorney general’s office is in order, too…

Hello World!

Ok. So I renewed my phone contract yesterday. T-Mobile had a sale, where any smartphone they had was free after rebate. And my boss was willing to lend me the money. So I went top the local corporate store and got the HTC Sensation. It was unrooted with the stock ROM. And that lasted all of abøøt an hour and a half once I got off work. To be honest, by the time l bought the phone, I had already downloaded and tweaked the latest ENERGY ROM for. It is essentially the same as the one for the HD2. So I have good comparison for the hardware.

And all I have to say is that it's lightning fast. I guess a 1.2 GHz dual-core will do that. And the Ram (768 mB), meaning I don't have to mess with a swap file or zRam (both are more trouble than they're worth on the HD2). I guess running Android on a phone that's designed for it (with proper drivers) makes a difference (remember the HD2 original came with WinMo 6.5, putting Android in it is kind of like putting a Corvette engine in a Mustang: you'll very the performance, but there will always be issues).

There are a couple of drawbacks to it. While all the literature I saw about it advertises that it has 4 gB of internal storage, only 1 gB is available to the user. Ok, I thought. But I soon realized that no one had implemented A2SD for the Sensation. And currently there is no way to repartition the NAND. So I'm making very liberal use of the move to SD. If I don't need a particular app for a widget, it'll get moved to the sd card...

But overall, I'm impressed. Right now, I'm running Gingerbread. But they have Ice Cream Sandwich coming right around the corner....

And did I mention that in the 10th and Commerce test, I can pull about 5 megs? Not too shabby. A short while ago that passed for broadband speed....

Stood up….

Saturday, I was at work, and when I got off, I noticed one of the employees at the business right next us had an HD2 like me. He told me he wanted to Netflix on his phone, and the only way to do that is either put windows phone 7 or Android on it. He still needs WinMO, so i told there was a way to run Android off the sd card (which I did for a while), and he said he’d be back so I could (I have all the necessary files on my laptop).

So I show up. At my work on my day off. And the id10t stands me up….

Ok people, if I’m willing to fix your techie items, then you need to show up when I say meet me. I didn’t buy a bus pass this month, and I have to eat the loss for the round trip bus fare. Fortunately, A co-worker called out, and I can make some use of my time here. But still, this is something to consider when you decide to no-show….

And he totally deserves it!

The Giants won a football game yesterday. You may know of it, but I won’t mention it because the No Fun League are total assholes when it comes to anything even remotely close to it…

Yes Eli Manning deserves the MVP and the obvious Ring that goes with it. At least until Frodo decides to throw it into a volcano…. But the title if this is about Tom Brady. He got a Well-Deserved Beating yesterday. And if there is anyone in Football who deserves a Tom Brady Well-Deserved Beating, it’s Tom Brady. His wife was asking everyone to pray for him and the Patriots during the game.during the game. There are many things that I may pray for. For one team during a professional sports event is not one of them. If I were to invoke a religious ritual for an NFL game, there is but one option: sacrificing Tim Tebow…..