I ’ve been a grumpy old man since I was a kid. Things get to me. Everything gets to me.
The word “discount” depresses me. Poshlost, as my mother used to call it, which roughly means “vulgar” in Russian. The more I spend on something, the more I think it’s worth it.
My wife, Lisa, feels this is pathetic. She believes it has to do with my being “to the manor born,” as she calls it, and while it is true that I grew up on Central Park West, did not spend a day in public school, shopped at Brooks Brothers, and summered in Nantucket, I never had a miniature pony.
I also, from time to time, have lapsed into the vulgar, such as when I wore a black see-through mesh shirt to a book party, for which AIR MAIL Co-Editor Graydon Carter will never fully forgive me.
When in doubt, always blame your parents, but here I can’t. They were quite thrifty. My father once bought a sports jacket at Walmart for 50 bucks and was so proud of it that he laminated the receipt to show everyone. (Even more interesting, he actually bought his own laminator—the only person I have ever known to do so—and pretty much began every day asking if we needed something laminated.)
I hate to bargain, because it makes me nervous, and I am absolutely terrible at it. Once, at an open-air market in Cambodia, I was offered two T-shirts for $10 and countered with three for $20. I am compulsive and impulsive, suffer from addictive jags that overcome me, and in a former life spent about $600,000 on leather in the space of a year and a half. (Let’s move on.)
But recently I turned 69, and unsure of how much I have left in the writing tank after nearly 50 years, I have begun to think I need to peel back a little. Actually, I need to peel back because of a recent financial-investment disaster. (Let’s move on.)
So, when I read an article in The New York Times in November by tech columnist Brian X. Chen on discount phone carriers and how they have become almost as good as the regular ones at a fraction of the price, I found myself tempted. It wasn’t simply that Chen noted the improvement in discount carriers. He gave them the kind of praise I don’t remember his ever doing before in a long history of reading his work and enjoying it. He is an expert, after all: before he wrote a column, he actually covered phone carriers, which frankly would cause me to kill myself.
He picked out Visible, operated by Verizon, as the best discount carrier, highlighting its coverage and its price—$25 a month for unlimited use with no annual contract. He did some tests to measure reception and felt it worked well. Given that my bill with regular Verizon is about $350 a month (I am not sure why, and when I spoke to a service person about changing plans, it was so confusing that I stopped listening), it became a no-brainer.
Visible was offering a free 15-day trial, except that I mucked it up and ended up actually signing up for the service and paying $25 for the first month. I was given an entirely new number, and it did work, even in the hinterlands. Some downloads were slow, which I could live with because I really don’t need any more TikToks of dogs humming Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”
I was also given the option of transferring my current number to Visible. But what if something went wrong? What if I lost my number? Would customer service be able to unravel it?
Time to reach out to the Guru.
I never had a miniature pony.
I e-mailed my friend Steve Stecklow, who knows more about tech than anyone alive and approaches it with the same investigative zeal he uses as a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal and, now, Reuters. Steve takes a softly sadistic pleasure in letting you know when you are about to do something stupid. We were on FaceTime, where he shook his head and grimaced in the special way that he grimaces. I felt small, very small, banished to the corner of the recycling center along with the outdated computer screens.
“Don’t do it.”
Oy …
I already did do it.
He told me that Wirecutter, The New York Times’s product-review site, had pooh-poohed the service. Which puzzled me: two different articles in the same paper basically saying the opposite of one another. He then directed me to Trustpilot, which gave Visible 1.4 stars out of 5, based on more than 950 consumer comments in which there was a consensus that anyone trying the service was a complete nutbag.
The complaints centered mostly on customer service, which many said was nonexistent. Many also resented getting only a chatbot when they called and never a live person, because Visible exists solely as an online company. Granted, most people make comments just to complain, but the sheer volume was not only frightening but recent.
“Would give a negative number if I could.”
“Ridiculous!!! Save yourself the frustration.”
“If I could give them negative 10 stars I would.”
Which leads me to what I think is a legitimate question and a serious one:
Why didn’t Chen put any of this in his column?
I have no idea, except that it would have made his recommendation weak and watery, something to the effect of: “Even though another entity at my paper dissed Visible, and that’s not to mention Trustpilot, where the comments were cringeworthy, Visible is a really good service that I highly recommend.” To be fair, Chen did make reference to customer-service problems in the final two paragraphs, which was a little too late after his tongue bath.
There was a consensus that anyone trying the service was a complete nutbag.
Had he put in what he should have, I never would have purchased the service. I think that he had a reporting obligation to do so, and showed a lack of due diligence. So I contacted Chen by e-mail, and he did something that is the bane of anyone writing a column: he made some sense.
He said his focus was on the quality of the coverage and download speeds, which was true, and that he had suggested other services besides Visible to try out. He also said he chose not to focus on customer service because there are “some products and services where customer service matters to people and some where they do not care about customer service.” He noted that when you buy a big appliance, then you care about customer service: with a phone, the problem is rarely the wireless service but the phone itself, so you go to Apple or an independent repair shop and get it fixed.
Sorry, Brian, I have to disagree here.
The thing about Visible is that it is new, and when something is new, customer service is vitally important, particularly since you have to insert a SIM card, or download an e-sim card, and don’t forget the all-important port-in code, which all sounds too much like Beam me up, Scotty.
Chen asked me if I personally had had any problem with customer service. I did not when I wanted information on how to cancel. And maybe I am being one gigantic pussy in not taking the plunge. But my phone number has been the only consistent thing in my life, and the idea that it might disappear in the transfer process was just too much to bear.
Chen meant no harm. There have to be more important things in life. Who gives a damn? So I got rid of Visible after using it for a week. There was no pro-rated refund. Which means that in the most recent billing cycle I didn’t save a dime but actually spent more because of having two services.
As for Chen, I still think he owes me $25.
Buzz Bissinger is the author of Friday Night Lights and a co-author of Shooting Stars with LeBron James