Switching From Boost to Boost Was A Bit Out of Catch-22

 I have never had one of those contracts for cell phones.  I have always used prepaid plans because I don't use the phone plan hardly at all and until 2014 I didn't use a lot of data either.  In 2014 before my big trip out west (the anniversary of which begins this weekend) I upgraded to a new smart phone, some LG model that was pretty decent.  I got it through Virgin Mobile for like $35 a month with unlimited calling and data.  

I stuck with Virgin through a few different phones, but then back in 2018 or 2019 they became part of Boost Mobile.  I didn't see a huge difference.  The cost was the same and I still got unlimited calling and data.  Earlier in the year they even created a new app that let you get money off your bill by doing daily challenges and watching videos.  Most months it was maybe $12-$14 off, though once it was more like $17.  So that was pretty neat.

One day on Vine I saw they had a kit for "Boost Infinite," which is I guess this new thing Boost cooked up with Amazon.  If you're a Prime member you can get Boost Infinite for $25 a month with unlimited calling and data.  So the same as my regular Boost only $10 less.  Sounds pretty cool, right?

So my kit showed up on August 5th and I put the new SIM card in my phone because it says you can transfer your old number and who really wants a new number and having to change your contacts everywhere, right?  But the card won't activate.  So I go online to their help page and chat with someone who tells me my device is "locked" with Boost Mobile.  Probably because the phone I bought was through a special Members Only promotion with Boost a couple of years ago.

So, fine, I'll call Boost Mobile.  Should be easy, right?  First you get one of those annoying things where it wants you to say stuff and then almost never actually understands what you say.  In this case especially its crummy "AI" wasn't going to know what I wanted so I told it to get a person and it did.  And of course from that person's accent she's probably in India or Pakistan or somewhere like that.  And she says that it could take up to 3 days to unlock it.

A problem I realized then was how could my phone work until then?  No one bothered to tell me to put the old SIM card back in, but eventually I figured that out for myself.  So I was back to the old SIM card for Sunday.  Monday I called Boost back and someone named "Lars," or something told me that it wasn't 3 business days yet; or I think that's what he said because I could barely understand him.

Fine, I'll wait until Wednesday when it should be 3 business days.  And of course the new SIM still doesn't work.  And the device still isn't "unlocked" yet.  Basically they've done nothing.  I call in and again someone in India I can barely understand gives me some kind of number and I asked several times how I was supposed to use this number and she just kept telling me to use that number.  Where?!  How?!

I went back on the chat and the fairly rude person there seemed at first to have things worked out.  At least until I realized the idiot had transferred my new Boost Infinite SIM to regular Boost Mobile!  He or she did the exact opposite of what I wanted!  I chatted with someone else who promised that I would get a call back the next day at 7pm.

So 7pm comes around the next day...no call.  7:15, 7:30, 7:45, 8:00...no call.  I start thinking that maybe they meant 7:00pm Mountain Time as they had used that time zone in some other messages.  I wait for 9:00, 9:15, 9:30...finally I get fed up and go back to the chat.  And we basically go through the whole thing again.  The "porting" center for Boost Mobile was closed by then so we'll have someone call you back at 7pm.  Uh-huh, sure.

Guess what?  Yeah, no call at 7pm.  So I made sure to call them earlier and again got someone in India who said my phone was unlocked now.  OK, great.  I called Boost Infinite's "help" line and got I'm pretty sure a black guy who had this really awesome voice.  I mean it would be great for radio or audiobooks.  I barely resisted the urge to tell him that.  He transferred me to the "porting" expert.

Finally we get to the one man who can fix my problem.  And yes, he did actually fix it.  He noted they were supposed to call me but didn't for...reasons and also that my phone wasn't "porting" because some dipshit didn't put in enough numbers on the PIN for the transfer request.  So he submitted a new transfer request and it went through.  Since I only have the one phone I had to call him with the phone I was transferring so as he said, a sure sign that the transfer would work was that the call dropped and the phone went dead until I could put the new SIM card in and activate it.

Fortunately Boost Infinite had sent me a second kit because that one idiot had probably ruined the first one by transferring it to regular Boost.

The whole thing was just a fucking nightmare.  Most of it demonstrated the problem with "customer service" jobs in the 21st Century.  Like something out of Catch-22, all these big companies have exported most of these jobs to India or other countries, so they can barely understand you and more often than not, you can barely understand them.  So you get "customer service" that can barely help the customer--or in some cases even hinders the customer.  But, hey, it's a few bucks cheaper!  And they'll pass the savings on to...their executives, not you.  Or even if it's not someone in India, you could be dealing with someone working remotely who really has no idea what they're doing, like that one I chatted with who switched my SIM from Infinite instead of TO it.

In 2021 I worked for a few weeks for a company that did TurboTax customer service as a "side hustle."  I can tell you that we were very underprepared for that job.  I mean the company that ran it didn't even give us a copy of TurboTax; more often than not we had to Google answers or ask someone more experienced.  Mercifully I didn't get many calls before they laid me off, mostly because I missed a call one night, but also they weren't really busy.  I mean before that one I hadn't gotten a call in 8 days so it was kind of their fault that I wasn't exactly chomping at the bit there.

The point being, you can have people just doing a "side hustle" who don't really know anything.  A lot of them don't really have a great attitude; they just want to get you off the line so they can take more calls or just to be rid of you.  Stuff like, "Call back in 3 business days," is basically saying, "Go be someone else's problem."

I'm not singling Boost out either.  Amazon is horrible at customer service.  Most of their staff is also probably in India or somewhere overseas and all they do is communicate to you through boilerplate emails.  I mean it's like trying to talk to someone using flash cards.  If your problem doesn't neatly fit one of those flash cards, you're pretty screwed.  And they probably don't know a lot of why Amazon does what it does so they can't tell you why they pulled a book or anything like that.

It's one of those absurdities of modern life that all these companies have created "customer service" departments that provide very little service for the customer.  Again, it's mostly so they can save a little money.  Unfortunately, since they pretty much all do it, what are you gonna do about it?  Nothing.

And now of course you got "AI" that isn't actually artificial intelligence.  I mean it's artificial but it's not intelligent.  Like those phone answering things if you can't parse your questions into the exact phrases it understands, it won't be able to help you.  99% of the time I either get frustrated and quit or have to get an actual person.  Even someone in India or side hustling from their parents' basement is better than dumb "AI" when it comes to customer service.