Ok, Alltel and their revenge.  In October I bought a smart phone and signed a 2 year contract for a smart phone plan.  I wanted the phone, not the plan.  They told me I had 30 days to change my mind if I didn’t like it.  Well, I did like the phone but my first months bill came to over $900 so I decided to back out of the contract and the phone.  I was out of town for most of that time so as soon as I got back, I went to the local Alltel store and tried to give it back.  The manager was out so they told me I needed his help with this, in the meantime, here.  Try this Blackberry.  I went home with it.  Was out of town for a couple days and when I got back (less than 7 days later) I went back to the store and said “no, I don’t want this either”  I was told too much time had passed and I was stuck with the blackberry and the plan.  I was not happy and decided to fight back.  I kept calling managers and supervisors until I finally found a guy who agreed with me.  I have been a customer of Alltel since ‘99 and I should be able to get what I wanted.  When he asked me what that was I told him I wanted a regular phone with a regular plan.  No contracts, just a regular customer.  I said I would even pay full price for my new regular phone. He sent it to me, overnight so I would have it for my trip to San Diego the next day.  I went to the store on my way out of town to get the numbers transferred to my new phone.  They informed me that they could not do that because they didn’t have the software.  I accepted that. I would have to look at the blackberry for the number then manually punch it in on the new phone.  I didn’t really want to do it to over 350 contacts, however I could deal with it for a week until I could find an alternative way of dealing with it.  That wasn’t ok with the guys in the store.  They were obviously unhappy that I ended up getting my way so they thought they would turn the screw a little bit (or a lot)  They said they were going to keep the blackberry because it was Alltel property.  I had arranged with the corporate guy to send the phone back to him and I had that in writing.  I didn’t have the letter with me, as I was on my way to San Diego.  I told them the deal and they insisted they were keeping the phone and my only copy of my 350 contacts.  I assured them they were not keeping the phone adding that all the little boys in the store put together weren’t man enough to stop me from walking out the door with the phone. When I grabbed it off the counter they tried to take it out of my hand.  I felt showed great restraint in not popping someone then.  They told me if I left the store with that phone, they would call the police and tell them of my “theft” of the phone.  I walked, saying “go ahead”  About 150 miles west, in the middle of the desert, I get a call from a Gilbert city policeman asking for my side of the story.  He acted like a worn out father of 4 who was tired of his kids squabbling.  I told him and he said “don’t go back into that store”  I agreed and assured him I had no intention of going back into any Alltel store except to give them all the phones and to cancel my service with them. That is exactly what I did as soon as I got back to town.  I am now a happy customer of AT&T and think it was the best move I had made in a long time. 

More stories later. That was longer that I expected.  I will keep an eye on comments in case there are any questions.  funny, though, isn’t it?

Thanks for listening.

Merlin

Getting ready to go to San Diego for a crane job.  This is the last time we will move this tower crane on this jobsite.  There has been a crane there for about 9 years, hopping it from one building to the next about every six months.  This is the last building.  In about another six months, we will take it down and truck it away.  Not a bad rental contract.  Wonder how many cranes they could have bought outright for that money.  Good thing it isn’t my job to decide those things for them.  I might have gone a different way. Of course the first crane on the job was burned down a long time ago by a bunch of eco-terrorists so that may throw the money out of whack a little bit. 

Still twittering and there are some good pictures of heights on my flickr page. There are a couple of Hannah Pictures up there too, aint she cute?

All in all, I have to give it a thumbs up. So far.  I’ll keep you posted. (no pun intended)

I have been twittering too, thats a site that I go to to answer the question “what am I doing right now?”  You can follow me and many people way more interesting than me.  I recommend Andy Ihnatko, Cali Lewis and the incomparable Veronica Belmont.  There are lots of cool tech people there I enjoy following.  I am also on Pownce, Facebook and Technorati.  All in the interest of networking for my business. 

Happy Holidays everybody!  Thanks for being there, without you, I would be even more boring. He he

Thanks for being part of my journey.  You can follow me on Twitter if you are a real glutton for boring punishment.

Merlin

 Home by Friday if the weather holds.

Merlin

Got an invite to pownce,  Thats a pretty cool thing.  If you havent heard of it, its a new networking site started by Digg wunderkind, Kevin Rose and friends.  Cant go wrong with this kind of insight at the helm

This will work out good for us.

More to come…

Merlin

I have several domains, merlinscomputers.com, merlinspc.com, kellypower.com (my first domain)  Until now, they have all pointed to the same page.  Now things are going to be separated out between business and personal.  If you want to read this blog, go to kellypower.com.  If you want to see whats going on with my business, including monthly newsletters and current locations, to to either merlinscomputers.com or merlinspc.com 

Gotta run, hope to say more soon.

Merlin

This would, of course, be a greatly beneficial shift for all of us IF, and I speak for myself only here, my thinking/creating were in alignment with what I want to create rather than what I seem unable to stop from creating. For myself, I am referring to a decided lack of financial well being. It would seem from the sudden rash of foreclosures and other money related maladies being suffered around the globe that I am not alone in this.

I am writing to get a baseline on YOUR experience. I would like to know if this shift was/is apparent to you and if it has affected you either adversely or otherwise.

Merlin