Can You Please Hold?

Perhaps I shouldn't have let the girl take over the phone call, but we had been in a bit of a snit for days in that way mothers and daughters have of miscommunicating. I had picked her up from the shop where we had taken her car (formerly my car) for a check up. We talked as we drove home together, chatting about work, the way we did before we quarreled. Back at home it seemed like a good time to bring up the phone bill for our shared minutes with our spawn of the devil wireless phone service. Now my relationship with Sprint has been long and unsatisfying, but in that way that I have, I just keep forgiving them and taking them back. Each time I call them they are always so nice, but after every conversation I get my bill the next month and find I have been charged for things I got for free the month before, plus new unfathomable items. Even though I have known for a long time that they are just no good, I am terrible at breaking up. The girl on the other hand has the moving on thing down to a science. 

She never actually yelled at any of the half dozen or more people she spoke to, even after two of them hung up on her and she had to call back and start the process over again. She had already gotten them to remove the roaming charges of $55.46 that were incurred while talking from our own house and the $47.80 charge for text messaging that was included in our basic package until last month before I foolishly called them, but then she came to the international text message to Guatemala for 20 cents and the 1.20 for text to UK. They refused to take it off the bill, even when she explained to them that she knew no one in Guatemala, but she had been texting UK for a year without additional charges. I only heard one side of the conversation, but it seemed like they implied that she had just forgotten where her friends lived. “So,” she says in a voice that anyone in their right mind would have known not to argue with, “you're telling me that I can't use my phone in my own home, which is less than ten miles from where it was purchased, but I can text Guatemala without actually knowing I'm doing it?” 

About this time I noticed that right under the list she had made of Sprint employee names she was recording something while looking at her phone. A wave of panic washed over me akin to what a passenger on the Titanic might have felt after making a quick count of lifeboats and humans. She was writing down all the phone numbers in her contact list! OMG, she was going to cancel this service! I pulled out my phone and frantically started writing down my numbers too. “...and I will not pay the cancellation fee,” she stated emphatically, “You are the ones in breach of contract. I have the service area map right here and my house is on it. You misrepresented yourself when I bought the phone. I have used international text messages since last September without any fee and suddenly you're telling me I will have to pay extra for it from now on. No, I am certainly not interested in any other plan! No, I will not hold. The last two people that put me on hold hung up on me. You will fix this now.” 

I am scribbling names and numbers randomly on an envelope as she writes hers in a clear firm hand on a note pad. I stare up at this amazing creature that I have somehow created as she disconnects the call. “Are you mad at me Mom?” she asks.

“Of course not sweetie, I just wish I had been able to get a new service before we got rid of the old one. I need my phone tomorrow.” 

“We can go get new ones on Saturday. I think we should get an I-phone.” Although I am thinking WTF we can't afford that, I am pulling up AT&T on the net. “Oh wow,” I said “We can get one for $199 plus a two year contract, but the cost of the plan is a little more than Sprint.”

“So when have we ever paid what Sprint says is our cost?” she replies.

Of course she is right. I look up the store address nearest our house, less than 5 miles. “I'm off tomorrow and I'm going there and talk to them.” I add “phone” to the long list of things I have to do on Friday. 

“Do you know what that last supervisor told me?” the girl asks, “She said she couldn't use her phone in her house either. I told her of course not, you have Sprint.” The girl and I finish off the last of the second bottle of wine we opened tonight, laughing hysterically. 

“They're going to call and offer us some kind of deal you know,” she says, thinking ahead, “so don't worry about the service getting disconnected too soon.”

“No problem,” I reply, “If they call I'll just say Sorry, we must have a bad connection and I can't hear you, what?, what?” 

I know this will cost me. Things with the girl always do one way or another, but they are always worth the price.