Sucka Ma Barrs

I don’t ever, ever want to hear another one of you complain about how cell phone plans in America are confusing.  I had to get a new phone today, and it was the most goddamned confusing thing I’ve ever gone through in my life.  I had one of the girls from the office there explaining everything to me while I was doing it, and I still don’t have a fucking clue what I was doing.

So, in the US you sign a contract for a few years, get a phone, and get a certain number of minutes.  In China you buy the phone separate from the SIM card.  So I bought a Motorola SLVR (for about half the price they cost in the US), then had to get the SIM.  Since I want to be able to make international calls I had to buy a certain type of SIM.  There’s some kind of monthly usage fee of 50 RMB (about $6), and then you have to go and buy a thing sort of like a phone card.  You buy them from corner newsstands, places like that.  But there’s a code on the card, and then you have to call and lock the code on the card to the SIM in your phone.

Seriously, I don’t have a goddamned clue what I paid for.  I just got to the point where I said, “See?  This is my wallet.  It contains a lot of money.  You tell me what to buy.”

Of course, now I have a cool new phone, and my ringtone is “Chocolate Salty Balls” from South Park, sung by Isaac “Chef” Hayes.

I wonder if the Chinese have any idea what South Park is.

Update: The phone I got was a Motorola SLVR L7e from China Mobile.

So it’s more like a TracPhone, but on GSM technology then???

Not that confusing…
Then again, you love Macs

Eh, still must of been like pulling teeth. I had to do the reverse a couple weeks ago. Had a Chinese family who wanted to get their son a phone while he was a student here. Of course, none of them have any of the normal “personal information” and the small local cell company I sell doesn’t normally take international customers. Spent the better part of 3 hours on the phone, relaying from them, to myself, to their uncle who spoke english, to them.

Because they didn’t go with a two year contract, I made zero comission on the sale, and then they returned the phone two days later anyway.

Their uncle was cool to talk to anyway, spoke better english then most teenagers and was a very funny guy. That helped make up for it.