Cellphone
We have a couple hundred dollars to invest in a cellphone, you'd think it would be easy to just go into a cellphone store and buy one right? We left home around 6:30 to start shoppingFirst we went to the AT&T store. It was difficult to find, we drove around for nearly 25 minutes trying to find exactly where it was. The parking lot of the plaza was designed by a madman. We finally get into the store, start looking at phones and half of the ones on display are out of stock! A salesman finally approached us and asked how he could help.
"Hey, how's it going? Can I help you with something today?" the salesman beamed.
"Uh, actually the phone I wanted is out of stock, and it seems most of the other ones are too," Michael said.
"Which phone where you looking at?" the salesman inquired.
Michael takes a piece of paper out of his pocked and reads off the model number.
"Oh, that model was discontinued," the salesman said happily.
"I see, is there a model that came out to replace this one?"
"Yep, this is the new one, but it's out of stock, most of them are because we are getting a new shipment with the new models soon."
"OK."
The salesman stood next to us for about a minute or so just smiling.
"Uh, if I need anything I'll ask, ok?" Michael told him.
He finally got the message and walked to a different part of the store
Next stop, Verizon. The Verizon Store is in a big building right on 309, you can't miss it. We only decided to try that store because it was easy to get to, and around the area that we were already in, and of course AT&T had failed us.
The store seemed nice enough, their plans were reasonable and so were the prices of the phones. Most importantly it seemed that their calling range was quite good, so sure, lets get a phone. We walk around looking for someone to help us, and it's really busy and hard to tell who is a salesperson and who is a customer. Finally a salesperson stands near the front of the store and yells "Everyone, remember to sign in!" Sign in? People rush the sign in counter, by the time we wander over to it there are about 7 names on it before us.
Quickly grabbing the attention of the nearest salesman, Michael inquires, "We just want to purchase a phone and a plan, we need to sign in?"
"Yep, but there are a few people on ths list before you and we close in 10 minutes," he replied quickly.
"Fine," Michael replied as the salesman was walking away.
We left.
Flustered, we decided to check out Best Buy since it was in the direction we were going. By this time it's aobut 8 pm. Best Buy had hardly anything, we left.
Then we decided to brave the mall. Since it was about 8:30 on a tuesday night we figured it wouldn't be too busy. We parked near Tweeters (mostly a stereo store). We ventured into the mall and went to RadioShack briefly, they had Verizon phones, but the prices of the same phones that we saw at the Verizon store were much much higher, forget that. Next to the RadioShack was a Nextel store. This was probably the most pleasant service experience we had all evening. The salesguy was knowledgeable and amusing, and they had some nice phones. Unfortunately their calling area wasnt wide enough to suit us.
We then found an "Authorized AT&T wireless dealer" kiosk. There were more phones here than at the actual store! There was one woman sitting in it who was on the phone, and another (apparently waiting for service?) leaning on the counter. The woman working there covered the mouthpiece of the phone to talk to us.
"Hi, do you have a quick question?" she asked.
"A quick question? Well we just wanted to purchase a phone," Michael replied
"Well I have a few customers and I can't activate a phone after 9 pm," she informed us.
"Uh, ok."
"You might just want to come back tomorrow I'm here from..." she said and gave her hours before smiling and returning to whoever she was speaking with on the phone.
We decide to leave the mall, it's a little after 9 by this time. While in Tweeters on our way out we see a little stand with cellphones. Since it was getting late we decided to just grab a salesguy and pay whatever we had to to get one then.
"Hey, what can I help you with?" the tweeters salesman asked.
"I'd like to purchase this phone."
"What sort of plan are you interested in?"
"Um, I am not sure, we just want a simple monthly plan"
"Ok, I'll go in the back and grab it for you!"
The salesman was gone for a few minutes, when he returned he was holding a prepaid cellphone box.
"No, this is not what i want, do you have this phone in stock with the normal monthly plans?" Michael asked.
"Well no, we are out of stock, but..." the salesman began.
"Bye."
We left.
So we were driving home, upset of course because it was late. We had wasted a couple hours looking for a cellphone, and we don't even like phones.
We pass the CompUSA that's about 5 minutes from our apartment. Michael asked me if I wanted to go there. "Sure, whatever" i replied. My head hurt from going in and out of air conditioning all evening, and I was just bored and upset with the whole horrible cellphone experience.
So we go into CompUSA, the place is completely dead. We look at cellphones, finally decided on a Sprint PCS phone since the phone was nice, the plans were good, and the coverage was exactly what we needed. Got a salesguy to come over. He explained that they don't actually activate the phones at the store, when you buy the phone you need to call a number in the box and they will activated it. That's fine, we paid for the phone and then learned that we get a $70 rebate when we activate it, nice.
By this time it was after 9:30. We decided to go get some Rita's Water Ice and head home.
The cellphone works great.