January 14th, 2007
Service in the 21st century
A couple weeks ago I struck some of the first blows to some long-delayed economizing so I can get my total budget under 1250 dollars a month. I’m not far off now, but I’m bound and determined to rub out my CMU loans by thirty as well build a sizeable “rest egg” for purposes yet undisclosed. As I said, things are in motion. I started with my phone service.
Softbank (formerly Vodafone K.K. formerly J-Phone formerly Digital Phone formerly…) promised upon their acquisition of Vodafone’s network low prices and simple billing. (Sound familiar?) The president of the company even went to far as to say something to the affect of, “I’m disgusted with overpriced service rates. I plan to lower the prices of our new service significantly.” Of course, I was all for this, since I never used my phone’s internet access, receive only about a dozen calls a month from one person, and somehow paid a variable forty to seventy dollars a month. However, the promises of people in power of course rarely amount to more than political /market posturing. What did we end up getting? A plan that proports 0-yen for unlimited calls and mail, which actually ends up costing about 4800-5000, plus the “unlimited calling” is only for the hours when everyone is at work (one of many fine print points in the contract). Is this starting to sound a little like an American provider? So there was that, and the staff have become even more not helpful than before. What pushed things over the top is the deluge of haughty endorsements with Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz the populace has been subjected to. So THAT’S what was siphoning all the money away from those rate cuts the executives promised.
So, enough was enough and for me– I wanted a sub-thirty dollar plan; and I got one. Willcom is my man now, a discount provider built on an antiquated, low-cost network commonly used for emerging economies (like much of southeast Asia). I no longer have leggy girls welcoming me into the service stores, because there aren’t any (girls or stores). I have a middle-aged, chronically coughing guy in a dirty jacket who sometimes can be found at Yodobashi being not too sure about a lot of the details of his company’s service. I have a prehistoric, palettized-display handset built by a network card manufacturer that looks more like an air conditioner remote than a cell phone. Supposedly I pay 2945 yen ($24.50) for basic service of about thirty outgoing minutes a month. However, any calls or email to others in the Willcom “network” are free. I haven’t gotten the first bill yet, so I’ll believe it when I see it, but this may fit my lifestyle, as it is. Amusingly, my cheapsie little phone grows faint after just a few days of non-use without a USB recharge to its dinky battery. I tried calling customer service today to update my address, but in a very non-Japanese fashion after receiving a busy signal was immediately placed on hold, and the phone died while I waited for the operator.
I’ve got a feeling things are going to work out just fine. But just in case, I kept my old phone for good measure. It does still have a working digital camera, compass, barcode reader, and television. Why waste a good piece of technology? 
