THE PHONE BILL FROM HELL

When Mary was out here on spring break, she was showing off with her new flip phone and telling me I ought to upgrade with Cingular and get one myself. Hmmm. Sounded like a good idea. My old phone was about 5 years old, and I was on some plan they don't even offer any more that allows you only 70 free minutes a month. So I called up and got my upgrade (to 200 minutes, for only $10 more) and my new flip phone.

Thanks a lot, Mary.

Day before yesterday, I got my first phone bill under the new plan. It was $458.83.

That's right--$458.83.

When I picked myself up off the floor I called Cingular and yelled at them. My phone bill comes in a buncha pages, and the one I was interested in was P. 5, "Call Detail." It listed all these calls, and they were nothing at all like 1,029 minutes. Then the nice boy who answered the phone at Cingular explained there was a P. 4 that I had missed, and it had three calls listed on it and one of them was 947 minutes. I finally found P. 4 (it was on the back of P. 3), and there was the dirty little booger. It was a call from my brother Gene at 9:54 p.m. and it showed, yep, 947 minutes. That's 15 hours and 47 minutes!

I ranted around that it had to be a mistake--it must be that new phone--maybe their switching system--or the tower--blahblahblah. The nice boy was just as sure it was me, that I HADN'T HUNG UP THE PHONE. That made me furious. I have NEVER had anything like this happen; I certainly know how to hang up a phone! "Get your supervisor!"

He got the supervisor and they ran an offer past me--I would pay half the $458.83, and they would forget the rest. I didn't think that was good enough, for something I am CONVINCED is not my fault. So they ran it up to the supervisor's supervisor, and they finally decided that they will have to run up to the next highest level (President Bush? Jesus Christ?) and then get back to me in 72 hours. "Don't worry. I am sure we can work something out."

Yeah, right. I think it's called "bankruptcy."

What do you guys think? And I don't want to hear anybody saying, "MOM, YOU DIDN'T HANG UP THE PHONE!"