Sometimes I wonder why I keep my Sprint mobile phone service. Debra and I are the only people I know who’ve had the same mobile phone number and provider for 10 years. I’d switch to some other service, but they all seem the same to me. I’m definitely not a mobile phone power user.

But today I find myself in the odd position of calling customer service to request that they add a feature to my service. I find this odd because I have the most basic plan I could get from them, and the cheapest phone available (i.e. “free” with the contract). It’s also odd because I usually handle all my account needs online (don’t even get me started on Sprint’s brain dead Web site), but for some reason they won’t let me sign up for text messaging online.

So I dialed *2 for customer service and was informed that my wait will be “more than 20 minutes.” I’m sitting here with my phone on speaker, listening to very bad atmospheric jazz that sounds like it’s coming in on an AM radio in the middle of the night. Every 30 seconds or so a woman’s voice comes on and says, “Please continue to hold. All representatives are currently assisting other customers.” Then it starts to tell me about the Web site and the music comes back on–cutting off the information.

What really irks me about this is that they know my phone number. When I dialed *2 the automated response system said, “please hold while we look up your account information.” Wouldn’t it be more customer friendly for the system to record my number and put me in a queue for their customer service people to call back? I guarantee I’d be a lot more friendly than I will be by the time I’ve listened to 30 minutes of this bad music on hold.

To make matters worse, Sprint has this annoying habit of calling me at the most inopportune moments, trying to sell me plan upgrades. They’re quick to point out that the call will not be counted against my allotted minutes, and then they go into the pitch about how I need to add another phone to my plan (for who? Charlie, maybe?) or sign up for even more minutes that I never use. So I know they have the technology to pick up the phone and call. Why can’t they call me at my convenience.

Sometimes I miss Ma Bell. At least then you knew exactly what you were getting.