This is a David Versus Goliath story.

Exceot Goliath is a large telecommunications company, and David is a skinny dipshit with a broken phone. Oh, and also it's not very interesting, but at least it's short. Well, okay, it's not very short. Anyway, enjoy!

Goliath, here, is a well-known cellular provider. Now, I don't want to name names or anything, so let's just call them . . . Meat-Obile. No . . . no, that's stupid. How about T-Blomie? Yeah! That'll work.

Some backstory: I had spent a good year pretty happy with T-Blomie. Unfortunately, that year was also spent with a truly ghastly, not-worky phone from yet another large corporation that I shall call . . . oh . . . Toomalor. Toomalor--which I'm pretty sure is one of the planets that gets wiped out by the Oans in Infinite Crisis, or so I hope--provided me with everything I could want in a cell phone: 1. It was a flip-phone, and therefore cool; and 2. It was blue. Unfortunately, Toomalor also provided me with everything I did not want in a phone, namely: it did not work very well. Or, to be more specific, at all. I sent this phone back to Toomalor for its quantum mechanics to take a look at it. They sent it back to me, fully repaired, with the helpful note, "Reflash corrupted. Replaced. Memory upgrade. Do not dip in peanut butter. X'hal s'in'dor lentel'ar!" Then a week later, the phone died again. Clearly, I could not rely on Toomalor's shoddy products, and I wasn't crazy to hear that Red Tornado had stripped off their home planet's crust, either.

Plus, it was time for the wife and I to upgrade a bit. We had, for a year or so, been sharing the Toomalor phone between us, and we decided it was time for us to each get our own cell phone. This decision was mostly because, well, if one totally silent cell phone was good, then two utterly silent, not-ringing cell phones would be GREAT! Plus, we could also now have the opportunity to not call each other, which nicely complements our habit of not talking to each other in person. We looked forward to not calling each other frequently, and on the special occasions when we did call each other, we dreamed of being able to exchange stony silences. On very special occasions, we could also not call friends and relatives and not talk to them, on separate lines. It was time.

So I called up T-Blomie. I got a helpful customer service representative after only hitting nine separate buttons. "Hi," I said. "I have an existing line with you guys. I'd like to upgrade my phone and to add a line and get my wife her own phone." The rep didn't miss a beat. "You can do that on our website!" she chirped. Swell! That's much more convenient than, I don't know, having you, the customer service rep, take care of this right now, on the phone! Did they not want my money?

They clearly did not, since I already knew that what I wanted to do was in no way possible to accomplish on their website at all. Sure, I could upgrade my phone. But add another line and order a new phone and set it up in my wife's name? Forget it. I explained this to the nice lady. "Are you sure you tried the website?" she asked, in tones similar to someone asking if I also needed help wiping. "There's some nice photos of Catherine Zeta-Jones you can jack it to while you shop. You sound like you're majorly fertile." Which is true, of course, but I was onto this minx. "I can't do what I'm trying to do online," I said flatly. "Can you guys help me or not?" "Of course!" she cried. "Hold on a sec," I heard as she clacked at keys, or perhaps she was just idly rattling Chiclets in her hands, Queegily. Then she hung up on me.

I called back, and once again got the irritating voice-bot asking me why I was bothering these good people whom I only wanted to give my money to. "Tell me what I can help you with!" she-it gamely said. Fuck the bot. "I can't seem to lay down a bunt," I replied. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that!" she-it said. The whole "let's pretend I'm really being helped" conceit grated on me further. "Streaming Christy Canyon videos," I said evenly. "Okay! I'll connect you right away." Hmmm.

I got another drone, male this time, and explained again what I wanted. He seemed to actually understand. First, he upgraded my phone, noting with some enthusiasm, "Yeah . . . that's the one I got." I resisted the urge to ask him how the Christy Canyon videos were on such a small screen. Then I explained about wanted to add service to my account and get the wife her own phone. "Oh . . . " he said in a small voice. "I'll have to connect you with billing for that. They're in Chicken, Alaska, so it might be ninety minutes or so to connect. Hang on!"

Look, I could go on for pages with this. Leave it to say that after a few more phone calls, I finally got a rep who understood what I wanted. She even managed to get me steered onto a "family" plan and a free phone for the wife to boot, although it would require a separate phone call later to merge the accounts. I thanked her profusely, and waited anxiously for the new toys.

In short order, they arrived. I was pretty happy with my new phone--it was still a cool-ass flip phone, and happily, it actually worked, which was novel--and the wife was happy with her new phone, which has awesomely terrible ringtone options as well as incredibly annoying colored flashing lights on the sides, which I like to think of as magical in origin, as in like, Warding of Epileptics, or something. Later, I was even more pleased to note that this free phone had only cost me $130.52, which T-Blomie had charged to my debit card.

WHAT THE FUCK? I called up T-Blomie again, and once again found myself chatting with Our Disembodied Lady of the Algorithm, who wanted me to tell her, lover, what can I do for you today? "I hate backgammon," I said in a clear cadence. "Okay, I'm connecting you now." Soon I was talking to an alleged human, this gal probably situated in, say, Glump, Missouri. "You charged my card a hundred and thirty bucks for a free phone!" I yelled. She clattered at her keyboard, or Chiclets. I swear to God, in less than five seconds, she said to me, "Oh boy. I see your order. You're right; this was a mistake." I clawed at my ears to clear what must have been a blockage. "What?" I croaked. This was the last thing I expected: agreement and capitulation. "I'm so sorry. I'm sending this to our credit department now. It should be off your account in 72 hours." I was dazed, and couldn't think of anything to say. She then offered, "And if you suffer any bank charges because of this, please let us know. We'll take care of those too."

I hung up utterly floored. Did that really happen? I sat back in my chair and chewed pensively on my feet. I wasn't sure about the world I seemed to occupy, and it felt like invisible things were occupying the space around me.

96 hours later, no such credit had been applied to my account. The wife was still merrily incapacitating mental patients with her new zowie-wowie Pink Floydophone, and I was still out a hundred and thirty bucks and change. Wearily, I steeled myself for another round with T-Blomie and dialed up again. "I'm interested in learning about Star-Bellied Sneetches," I told the autoseductress before she could get much of a bot-word out. "Okay, I'll connect you now!"

I explained my deal to the guy (this time), and secretly pined away for the incredibly helpful (and yet I guess not, since no credit had manifested) gal. After much Chicleting, he coldly informed me that the phone I had ordered for the wife was "not supposed to be free on that date." Uh. I started to decompensate a bit. "Look. The free phone was the whole point of ordering that new service. I was going to get her a phone just like mine, but it would have cost another hundred dollars. That's why I ordered this phone." There was a wintry pause, and then he said, incredibly, "The thing is, they don't even make that phone any more. I mean, it's discontinued. You can still get it on the site, but it's out of date."

RIght here is where I entered a fugue state. Okay, first of all, HEY, NEWS TO ME! Not that I particularly give a fuck, since as long as it works, I'm happy, but STILL. Second of all, WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING? I was told it was free. And third of all . . . so the implication is that it's a crappy, unsupported phone now. So why would that equate to "Naturally, you'll want to pay a premium for this terrible phone that was so unpopular that it got discontinued"?

I immediately began babbling confused, terrible things, such as "Why I!" and "But you!" and "Wooden leg!" and such confused gabbling until I happily hit on an effective phrase, which is forever burned on my brain: "I have no intention of paying . . . " and then I was smoothly cut off. "Whoa, whoa!" Followed by assurances of my impending credit, FER SURE. But I wasn't done. Emboldened, I tried another in-my-mind lethal grammatical construction: "Charge reversal." "Sir!" (Confession: I pretended at this stage that he was saying "Sire!") "There's no need for any of that. I'm going to get this off to our credit department right now. These things get handled within . . . " Here was a fateful pause. ". . . ten to fourteen days."

His electro-balls were in my inter-hands. I squeezed. "It better be," I hissed. Then I strategically relented, to give hims some room for dignity. "I realize that you're just doing your job," I said, modulating my tone. "I just need this resolved." He agreed enthusiastically.

And after only three follow-up phone calls, ("I'm interested in how ties are made." "Okay; I'll connect you now!") I have received my credit.

The system works.