Phone companies are stupid

After my recent troubles with Verizon, I’m inclined to believe that phones companies are run by incompetent management. Of course, I know that it’s not something wrong with just phone companies, but an inherent risk generally realized in large companies. They’re big, inflexible, and stupid. They march forward, trampling over everything in their way, which usually includes customers, when they’re nice enough to believe that people are customers instead of imbeciles to be separated from their cash. Those companies are dinosaurs, waiting to be made extinct.

In New Zealand, one such company is Telecom Corp.. It recently eliminated its plan that gave customers unlimited text messaging for $6.29 per month. It now offers “only” 1,000 messages per month before extra charges kick in. That’s a good move, since text messaging is a dying phenomenon.

Before I went through my cell phone switch nightmare, I never used text messaging. When I returned to Sprint, I got the cool phone that makes web surfing and text messaging workable. So I started messaging. Certain people have been known to receive a dozen or more messages per day now that I’m used to messaging. It’s cool and stuff. But 1,000? Danielle has only 500 per month with her Verizon plan, but I’ll be amazed if she uses them all. So 1,000 seems to be plenty.

But still. Progress works like this: every year, a company changes its services to offer a lower price or more of the product. It happens with cars. It happens with computers. It happens with video games.

The common theme in my examples is technology. Anything that can technologically improve gets better or cheaper. It’s so unavoidable that it might as well be the 11th Commandment. But Telecom Corp. missed the memo.

Fraser Ray didn’t like that, so he protested by sending 80,012 text messages during May, the last month of the old plan. He makes me look like an amateur since I only sent Verizon twenty-six checks to pay my $56.09 bill. I have a new hero. But Mr. Ray was not alone because New Zealanders are awesome.

Telecom spokeswoman Helen Isbister said a handful of people had sent more than 100,000 text messages in May.

With an obvious protest, how does Telecom Corp. interpret this?

“I suppose it’s an indication of the kind of thing we wanted to discourage by putting a cap,” she said.

Phone companies are stupid.