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Re: Prepaid Cell Data Plans (was: Mobile Tor stuff)



Thus spake Mike Perry (mikeperry@xxxxxxxxxx):

> However, when I purchased a SIM for their pay-by-day/pay-as-you-go
> plan, that manager first asks me for an ID. I looked at him
> strangely and said "Why do I need an ID? I'm paying in cash" and he
> said "Ok, just write your name and birthdate down and I'll create your
> account." Little did I know that this SIM card could not get any sort
> of data plan added to it.
> 
> So maybe it has something to do with attitude and the expectation of
> the salesperson/manager in addition to your own expectations? I also
> didn't have my phone on me and was very confident technically about
> the fact that I should just be able to buy a SIM and put it in my
> phone later without hassle, perhaps that helped?
> 
> But these sorts of social subtleties are well beyond me, though. Maybe
> they were able to sense that I've been so desensitized by all these
> demands from me over the years that I really didn't care any more if
> they would take my money or not? :)

One other aspect of how these interactions happened was that I asked
to buy a GoPhone/FlexPay SIM, got the sales person to go through the
process of creating the account, and THEN produced the cash instead of
credit card + ID. This may have had something to do with increasing
their willingness to finsih the sale: they would have had to have
cancelled the whole deal just because I didn't have my ID on me and
didn't want to do a credit check for no reason...


-- 
Mike Perry
Mad Computer Scientist
fscked.org evil labs

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