BUYING A CELL PHONE WAS ALREADY FRUSTRATING. THEN CAME THE WEB.
By David Lidsky, June 2001 Issue
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My current object of desire is a cell phone and a rate plan. Put me in a retail electronics store, though, and I might as well be wearing a FLEECE ME NOW. ASK ME HOW button. In a desperate attempt to get the salespeople to like me, I just do whatever they say. As I peer at the blenders, Walkmans, and electric razors on my Boulevard of Broken Dreams, a.k.a. my kitchen, Iwonder if the Web can save me from myself. There are about a dozen sites whose goal is to steer you through the maze of plans and phones, ultimately selling you one. Simplifying a complicated and annoying process--and keeping me out of the mall--that's what the Web's for, right?
At a wireless store, the salesperson will ask a couple of questions before deciding which plan is best for you and handing you a brochure. LetsTalk.com and Point.com offer an idealized version of this dance, showing you all the plans in your area first, and then letting you whittle the list down dynamically by choosing cost, calling area, included minutes, network, and calling feature preferences. I went from 70 plans to four in about two minutes. Buy.com, Cellmania, ePhones, Roxy.com, and Simplexity.com have nothing like this, so I toss their numbers.
The pre-interview helps, but I have no idea which of the remaining plans will best fit my usage pattern. MyRatePlan.com's bill calculator figures the estimated monthly charges for every plan using data you enter about how and where you use your phone, and ranks them by price. No other bill calculator can compare, but MyRatePlan hands you off to a carrier to buy, so forget about one-stop shopping. I went back to Point.com but it only points you to local store addresses. Click.
My case of e-commerce interruptus worsened when I learned something about the remaining sites: You have to submit your Social Security number and driver's license online so the site can do a credit check to approve the plan contract. No thanks, I'm in the market for a cell phone, not a new identity. E-commerce is also terribly unfulfilling when you reaize that the carriers bill you separately for your activation fee and first month's charges, so all you're buying online is the phone. Only GetConnected.com had the courtesy to show me what the cost of my phone would be after the carrier's rebate. But it still planned to charge me fully for the phone because it's a mail-in rebate. Even its own $50 rebate wouldn't be credited online. Shouldn't the site let me get these instantly? Paging GetConnected, LetsTalk, and TeleBright.com--dial "C" for clue.
It'd all be worth it if the phones were as discounted as bestsellers at Amazon. But--get this--it's more expensive to buy online! You're paying full retail, the sites tend to focus on higher-end phones, and you can't dicker for a better deal like you can in person.
These sites aren't even complete research hubs. LetsTalk's excellent just-the-facts-ma'am feature charts for phones and plans beat brochures, but the site doesn't say boo about which carriers or handsets are best. Nor does any other phone site. I found halfway decent phone reviews at Wireless.Cnet.com, but no plan evaluations. You'd think someone would have authoritative reviews of wireless carriers, but they don't exist. Epinions.com has user reviews but no critical mass (94 cranks griping about AT&T Wireless is amusing but not statistically valid), and numerous Google.com searches turned up nada. I even broke down and bought an online subscription to Consumer Reports (a whopping $3.95!) to read its February 2001 review of cell plans. But they cop out and offer only impotent bleatings about how you can't check the reliability of a service beforehand. How well I know.
I've got my printouts from LetsTalk and MyRatePlan's back-of-the-envelope figuring. Someone call me if one site puts all the pieces together. Meanwhile, I'll be at the mall.
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