28 April—It appears that I was too quick last month in praising the “knowledgeable, extremely helpful, U.S.A.-based tech at Consumer Cellular [who] offered me five bucks off my monthly bill” if I dumped paper billing and opted for automatic billing with online statements. Because the damn kid neglected to mention that I if I didn’t dump paper billing I’d be charged a five-dollar “convenience fee” every month.

So by going paperless I only was able to avoid paying five dollars more every month, rather than pay five dollars less. I discovered that only yesterday when an email advised me that my monthly online statement was available.

I guess I have to thank GTCR for that. GTCR (for founders Golder, Thoma, Cressey, and Rauner) is the Chicago-based private equity firm that bought Consumer Cellular from its two founders at the end of 2020. In its 43 years, GTCR has done quite well in leveraged buyout, leveraged recapitalization, growth capital, and rollup. Will GTCR strip Consumer Cellular’s assets (including personnel) and milk it dry, as private equity firms usually do, and then sell off the dissipated carcass in several years, just let it go belly up, or do the right thing?

So far, it’s not encouraging for Consumer Cellular’s customers or, from what I’ve been able to glean from the internet, for employees.

Anyway, the knowledgeable twerp in Oregon—who’s probably grateful to still have a job—also neglected to tell me that the highly touted free data (i.e., internet over the phone, as opposed to wi-fi) upgrade from 500 megabytes to a gigabyte to my cheapo plan didn’t kick in unless I requested it. The tech’s lousy communication is one thing. But even though Consumer Cellular, a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) with no facilities of its own, has to buy more service from T-Mobile and AT&T to provide it, why didn’t it just do the free upgrade silently and automatically? Silly question.

Since I was annoyed by Consumer Cellular’s new owner’s shenanigans and consequent inconvenience to me, I googled other providers with extra-cheap plans. And I was positively amazed to find a plethora of MVNOs that were even cheaper, lots cheaper. I haven’t begun to do serious research yet. But if I can find one that’s significantly less expensive than Consumer Cellular and has U.S.-based tech support and doesn’t require contractual commitment, I just might switch.

Hope springs . . .