No, Really..."No Thanks!"

I got an email from my cellular provider last week. Apparently they've been wringing their hands together, worried that my current mobile phone isn't everything my heart wants and desires. Now, I am on a very simple plan. A modicum of free minutes, nationwide long distance, and that's about it. No built-in text messaging plans, no web access plan, nothing like that. Nor do I really send text messages or use the web access built into my phone, and not just because it's not covered in my plan. I just don't use or need it. So there's nothing about my usage patterns that would make them think that I require a new phone or new packages to add to my service.

However, there is now a year left on my contract (I should have long since been out of contract, but there was some shuffling that went on last year before we moved and I knowingly consented to a two year extension to make them easier and less expensive) and I guess they're staying up nights fretting that I might leave once the contract is up. You know. IN A YEAR.

(Note to cellular providers: if you all didn't suck at least a little bit on service, pricing, and general customer service, you wouldn't have to use contracts to lock people in. They'd stay on their own. It's a terrible way to do business, it truly is.)

So I ignored the email last week. I don't want a new phone. This one calls people when I type in numbers and press send, and it lets me talk when other people type in my particular numbers and my phone rings, and that's all I'm really looking for out of, you know, A PHONE.

Apparently they were so concerned with my lack of immediate contact when they made their generous offer to charge me money to replace something that still works fine and lock me in for three more years instead of just one more short year of my life, and they sent me a text message to alert me to this wonderful deal that awaited me. In the text message, they lovingly described what I was entitled to indenture myself to, and then at the end, they included a brief, annoyingly txt-speechy description of how to reply to the unwanted text message to tell them that it was, shockingly, UNWANTED.

I worked out the instructions and replied back to get them to never text message me again, and I got a CONFIRMATION text message that I had to reply to AGAIN to confirm that I didn't want such vital messages as "please give us $79.99 so that you can throw a working piece of equipment in the trash in the name of keeping up with everyone else's pieces of beeping plastic."

I replied to that one, and my phone has now blessedly stayed silent. FOUR text messages to say, "No, thank you," and get them to actually go away.

It could be worse, though. They could have had a telemarketer call me and insinuate that I'm a dinosaur because I don't want a phone that will play MP3s at me and show me my email and generally annoy me because the main function of the phone has been nearly lost in the morass of other functions that are built into the damn thing, and the whole thing will cost me three or four times what I currently pay per month.

In fact, I think they would have done that, but I already opted out of marketing calls. That's what must have gotten them so concerned. They must think only a terribly depressed person wouldn't want to hear about their amazing offers. I really should be grateful that they care.

Really, I think I'll see if another company has better coverage out here among the horses and switch when my contract's up next year. So THEY can annoy me with emails and calls and text messages anew, I'm sure.