Yesterday, my son and I got new cell phones. We finally reached our two-year “you get a new phone now!” date — he was beyond excited, since he had a cheapy crap phone we bought on Ebay after he lost one nice phone skiing and sent another through the laundry (sound familiar, parents?). He decided on a V-Cast phone so he could get music on his phone. This V-Cast thing is quite the scam, as far as I can tell. The monthly fee only covers the airtime you’re accessing the V-Cast system so you don’t use your minutes. The songs are so incredibly expensive — $2/each — that I am amazed anyone decides to buy this service. Then again, what do I know, I’m not a teenager.

The craziest thing about the whole buying experience with Verizon is that I wanted to change my service level at the same time, since I apparently am such a big cell phone blabber that I blow past my minutes pretty consistently. But, every time you change anything on your plan, you automatically extend your plan by a year. So, according to the Verizon customer service guy, I should wait until the day after buying the new phone BEFORE changing my service level. Why? Because, and I know this is wacky math and all:

new phone = new 2-year contract
new service = new 1-year contract

Total: new 3-year contract

Basically, by changing phones and plans on the same day, they add these two together and come up with 3 years. By waiting 1 day, I add just 1 more day to my two year contract. Now, this has got to be the stupidest, customer-irritating thing — no wait, the whole contract thing really is, but this is just an extension on that whole story. Why isn’t their system as smart as that customer service agent?