I really hate it when I let something slip by for months and months. Grrrrr! Back in May… on May 2nd to be exact, I ended up deleting my ring tone on my phone. You see, I needed to save something on my phone, I think Mr. A sent me a picture or something, and I am constantly out of room on my stupid cell phone. I don't text, I don't take pictures. I guess I have about 150 phone numbers, so maybe that's why my memory is always so clogged.

Now I know it's stupid to become attached to a ring tone, but I really liked this one. It came WITH THE STUPID PHONE. However, T-mobile doesn't keep Nokia ring tones available for download. They can't even tell you which ring tones come with any particular phone. After I exhausted that avenue, I went on a search, looking for my ring tone. AJ helped. We spent hours looking. I couldn't remember the name of the ring tone I'd deleted. Apparently Nokia releases similar sounding ring tones. After listening to probably hundreds, I was so discouraged. I'd listened to “Robotique” at least a dozen times, while listening to the rest of the ring tones in the bundle of ring tones that went with my phone model and dozens of others. Finally, AJ heard me play my ring tone. I no longer recognized it, so ring toned out I was.

Here's the wrong Robotique ring tone.

Here's the one that came with my phone, that one I wanted.

Since I couldn't get the right one downloaded, I had to choose one of the ring tones on my phone. I didn't like any of them, but finally settled for this one. I hated it. This IS the tune, but different. It was truly horrendous. Every time my phone would ring, SOMEONE would launch into some kind of dance. You know with the cha-cha-cha and hands up in the air waving. Agh.

As I mentioned above, I had located MY ring tone. In order to download the ring tone into my phone using T-Zones, I'd have to pay $5.99. That would get me one month of Internet on my phone. I didn't want to pay $5.99 for my ring tone. I decided instead to just download the ring tone to my computer, and I bought a cable for my phone off eBay. Only while looking on Nokia to see which cable I needed, I somehow got the wrong number, and ordered the wrong one. They're $50 new, this one off eBay was around $5. The poor guy sent me 3 or 4 cables, and none of them worked. FINALLY, I discovered this was the wrong cable, so I told the guy, and he so kindly sent me the right cable. That one didn't work either!!

Finally I decided to sign up with T-Zones, but my phone wouldn't allow me to do that. I called T-mobile and talked to a representative, who started talking to me like I was 5 years old, explaining how I can't check my email via my phone. I practically yelled at her that I'd been on the ‘net since 1995 and step up her vocabulary. She couldn't figure out what to do, and I think I hung up.

A month later I realized that I was being charged for T-Zones. And I had yet to download the ring tone to my phone. Then I completely forgot about it, until I was going through a box of papers from my desk and saw the download instructions. And then it was two more weeks until finally today I told myself I was GOING to get that stupid ring tone, or cancel the stupid T-zones.

If I take the time to go look at my past bills, I'll just be wasting more of my time. Without spending any more time on this stupid decision, I estimate that I signed up with T-Mobile in June, and have been paying $5.99/month ever since. I feel like an idiot. I've wasted at least $35 if not more, on a ring tone.

AGH.

Now tonight, I finally got my ring tone downloaded. Now if I can just remember to cancel the T-Zones tomorrow!!!

We all make stupid decisions, this has been my True Confession for the month.

UPDATE: Of course you know being a bean counter I couldn't stop wondering how much I actually spent on the Ring Tone Fiasco of 2008. I called T-mobile today and asked them to cancel the T-zones. I related my whole sordid ordeal to the representative who was so fortunate to get me on the phone. He was kind enough to go back to my last billing date and remove the entire $5.99, instead of prorating it for the month. But I still spent $28.35 for five months of T-zones, plus $6.95 for a cable that I could never get to work.

Yours Truly,

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