Sometimes, tightwaddery results in… alternate “expenses”.
Example: the two hours I spent getting a communications issue straightened out this afternoon/early evening.
OK, the tightwad part: since I do not very much like to talk on the phone (missing visual cues, etc.) and I have NO desire to be connected wherever I am 24×7, but I do recognize the benefit of having a phone handy when I’m out and about (especially when deep in the “piney woods” backroads of America’s Third World County), I have a cell phone, but it’s sub-basic, a pre-paid, calls-only “dumb” phone.
Suits me just fine. Ever since I ditched a more expensive phone and plan, I’ve been just hunky-dory setting it to “Off” unless I want to make a call. And at $15/month for many, many (MANY) more minutes than I use, it’s just about right. Yes, there is one cheaper option, but the company that offers it doesn’t cover America’s Third World County worth spit.
And all has gone well with this lil pre-paid “dumb” phone for five years or so until today.
Entered the code to add air time/minutes and… message said to call support to complete the transaction. “WTF?!? Never seen THAT before!” thought I. So, called. Told me the code had already been used. Over the course of almost 2 hours, I finally learned that the code had been credited to the wrong phone, one with a completely different number to mine. *huh?!?* Yup.
Four different people told me they’d corrected the problem and credited my air time and all, and four different people were wrong. Round and round it went, until I finally found a service person (apparently the only one in India) who knew how to deal with the issue.
So, I have my tightwad-qualified phone for another couple of months. It does what I want it to (again) and doesn’t do what I want it to. Simple, inexpensive: just the ticket for a tightwad. But there are times… *sigh* Fortunately, this is the first such time in the years I’ve been using this thing, so “amortized” out, a couple of hours inconvenience divided by about five years isn’t all that bad, I suppose. *heh*