Ringtones

A little over a month ago, Trueman and I made the switch from Sprint and its horrendous customer service to T-Mobile and its much nicer and much more responsive customer service.

The switch went well. It took us maybe 20 minutes in the T-Mobile store to set up our account, pick out the phones, and get some protective gel skins (white for me and black for Trueman) so we can tell the phones apart. And so they'll last awhile. The customer service and sales drone in the store was nice, efficient, and very un-drone-like. A welcome change from Sprint.

Canceling Sprint was not quite as easy.

Apparently, when you get the final bill, you must pay it at a Sprint location because they cancel your online account as soon as you cancel your service - which means you can't make an online payment and you can't make a payment over your phone. Your only options: going to a Sprint location of mailing payment in hopes they might get it. (Though this being Sprint, it would not surprise me if they claim they didn't if you go that route.)

We went to pay the bill in person and, of course, foolishly went to the most convenient Sprint location - the one inside the mall. The one where you can set up service, get new phones, add service, and pay your bill. Except, of course, if it happens to be your final bill. Which requires special service at a full service location. Meaning, "We don't do that here. You have to drive another x miles to find our other location, hope it's open, and make your payment there." (Grumble ... yacouldasaiddthattwentyminutesago!)

It took every fiber of my being to keep from shouting "I'm Free! Free!" once the Sprint sales drone handed me the receipt for the final bill. I did hand him the bill and tell him that he could shred it, as I won't be needing it anymore. He goggled at me. Obviously, no customer has ever offered him a bill to shred before.

We are now, thankfully, free of Sprint, and happy with T-Mobile. T-Mobile is fun. Except that I keep getting calls for the prior owner of my phone number, as well as the odd text message for the same. They've been getting less and less, and I've not received any in a while. I hope it stays that way, because I'm not Rashiki and if I get another text message of "what up?" or some other badly-worded, grammatically-horrifying, booty call, I'm likely to call them back and tell them to sign up for Remedial English 101.

With the new phone, I have the option of downloading ring tones from the T-Mobile website, which has a pretty large selection of them - except, of course, for ring tones that I really want. I would like to either have the main theme from Harry Potter or the song from the Army recruiting commercials for my ring tone. Put Army in the search, and not much comes up. Put Harry Potter in the search and a lot comes up, but none of them are the main theme. I have hope they will add something I want eventually, though.

In the meantime, I browsed some of the voice and sound effect ring tones they offer, and those are worth a snicker. The site gives you the option of previewing (or prelistening, I guess) the tones, so naturally I had to listen to the "angry cat" tone - which does very much sound like a very angry cat and brought my cat running into the room, eyes wide, looking for the pissed off intruder. I'm thinking that would be a useful ring tone for cat owners who tend to misplace their cell phones in their own homes. All they'd have to do is call their cell and then follow the trail of fluffed up, crouching, hyper-vigilant cats running to the location of the angry cat ring tone.

I can see that conversation in the checkout line at Food Lion: "Oh, excuse me. My phone is hissing."

Of course, for those of us who are pet owners and tend to sleep through a ringing phone (like myself), there should be the one sound effect that will get us out of bed and wide awake within a fraction of a second - that hurka-hurka sound of a pet being sick on the living room carpet. That'll get you up and at 'em ... (Alas, they do not offer that one. Although I think it should be a standard option for wake up calls and alarm clock sounds.)