Not Rare, Not Medium Rare, Not Medium, But WELL DONE!

Val Thevictorian comes to you this evening from the wild blue yonder. No longer does she find it necessary to squeeze herself down like Tim Allen in The Santa Clause to fit through a tiny stick attached to the lid of her Shiba, and out through the glass and screen of her living room window. Nope. Tonight she soars full-blown from the end of the porch, off a platter big enough to serve unlimited catfish, chicken, shrimp, fries, and hush puppies.

I've gone and done it! Stick a fork in SPRINT--they're done!

No longer will I be held hostage to their whim, charging me six times my monthly fee for allegedly using twice the bytage I was allowed with my mobile broadband stick. That is poppycock! Not only was it physically impossible for me to use that much, even if 10,000 Vals typed at 10,000 keyboards to post 10,000 blogs daily for 10,000 years...but they had overcharged us once before about a year ago, and Genius had called them and they agreed to the preposterousness of it all, and removed the overages. Not so this time. They gave Genius some lip, and were only willing to take off 1/3 of the cost in exchange for an upgrade in service. No thank you. Strong-arming Val is no way to go through life, SPRINT.

Yesterday, an unassuming DISH contractor arrived in a minivan with a magnetic DISH logo on the door, and proceeded to drill holes in the porch railing, mount a new little DISH, tunnel through the concrete of the basement wall, attach a modem, and help the hooky-from-work Genius run some CAT5 cable so he could hook that modem into our existing router. Took less than two hours, and I am one happy internet hillbilly this afternoon. When I turn on my computer, the internet is right there waiting for me! No connecting. No loss of service. No reconnecting. No restarts. No giving The Pony a set of TV rabbit ears and having him stand on his head on the roof while trying to get a signal. Whoop-ti-freakin'-do!

Genius congratulated me for joining the world of the early 2000s.

Today I had the pleasure of calling SPRINT to tell them I wish to drop my broadband service. Hmpf! I felt like I was in a dark room full of interrogators, a blinding light shining in my eyes. WHY? Why did I want to drop my broadband? Because I have been unfairly overcharged twice, and it will not happen again. I will not continue to throw good money after bad service. On a given month, I do not go over my allotment. Occasionally, I have gone a smidgen over, which cost less that $20. Fair is fair. I did not complain. But when the overage tallies up to over $300, for using DOUBLE my allotment in one month, the farfetchedness begins.

Let the record show that any little overage previously occurred in the summer months. Teacher. Home from school. Late hours. BUT this falsified trumped-up charge happened during the month of May. You know May. Mrs. Val Thevictorian had 15 minutes on the internet prior to leaving for work, then turned off her computer. She did not arrive home until after 5:00 p.m. Then she had her reality shows to watch part of the night. Oh, and there was that little business of Val being hospitalized for three days beginning May 23, and off the internet for an entire week due to feeling puny upon release.

The nail in the SPRINT coffin was when the bill for June arrived, and showed that Val had used barely two-thirds of her internet allotment, even though she was home all day every day, still kept late hours, and was not away from internet for a week. Pretty fishy.

Did the SPRINT folk try to make a deal to keep Val, the loyal, never-missed-a-payment, four-cell-phone-plan customer? Nope. Instead, they put Val on hold, with loud muzak, to await a supervisor to cancel the plan, because apparently, regular customer servicers are not allowed to drop options from plans. They are, however, allowed to ask if I contacted SPRINT regarding the disputed bill, while I'm sure they were looking at the futile efforts from Genius right there on screen, chuckling silently behind their headsets. Oh, and they insinuated that neighbors must have been stealing our internet since they could see that our usage was usually less than the allotment. Did you know that when you start service, the bill is pro-rated for the number of days you actually use it, but when you drop service, the option cannot come off the bill until the last day of the billing cycle, in this case August 1st? Funny how that works.

I sent Genius a text telling him that SPRINT was being a feed-sack full of penises, and acting all fake sorry at my predicament. Fakers! Though I actually wanted to describe them with a couple letters different in that word. Genius agreed.

Then he told me to stop texting him at work, because every three minutes I took from his day cost his employer a dollar.

That boy may have a future with SPRINT when he graduates.