A NORMAL SLICE OF LIFE IN SACRAMENTO
Nope, this isn't our current site - this is Salt Creek County Park on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington in September of 2004. It was deserted, and lovely, and captures so well what makes fulltiming great.
We're still in Sacramento, living the normal lives of temporarily anchored nomads. We are halfway through our stay, which means that most of the "chores" are done and we have filled the calendar with fun... too busy to blog!
On Saturday, we did one last big chore: visited the Verizon store for our "Free Every Two Years" upgrade to new phones and a new aircard. Of course, they aren't REALLY free - we had to pay taxes on the "full amount" of the phones, which is an absurdly high list price that no one EVER pays. And then, we had to send in rebate forms, a process guaranteed to make you tear your hair out.
At Costco, if you get a rebate on a product, Costco simply deducts it from the price of the item. At Verizon, you walk out with a 3 1/2 foot long cash register tape - one for EACH item - that includes 2 feet of small type detailing the requirements for requesting the rebate. Pay attention, because you have to be 100% correct to have a crack at actually receiving the rebate. 
Each rebate request has to be sent in a separate envelope. Each rebate request needs to be accompanied by the the original UPC code from the box. Each rebate request has to be signed in blood (that matches your blood type).
You've seen the Verizon commercials, where each Verizon customer has a crowd of Verizon support personnel following them around, 24/7? How come one of those people can't FILL OUT THE REBATE FORMS???
So, a lot of our time recently has been spent learning our new phones. We also upgraded our aircard to the USB 760, which has the Verizon Access Manager software built in... nice! Our internet speeds are WAY faster than with our old card. Eventually my satisfaction with the new aircard will overcome Rebate Angst, but that wound is still fresh.
Here is another great photo from our early travels - Crater Lake in Oregon. Can you tell my thoughts are turning to the Pacific Northwest?
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Wait until you actually receive your rebate - if it is like the one I got last November, it is a Verizon Gift Card, not a check. Supposedly you can use it like a credit card, but it wouldn't surprise me if some businesses wouldn't accept it. I had no trouble using it at Fry's Electronics when I bought my AT&T Air Card!
ReplyDeletegypsy
Is the air card unlimited use? We are curious although our alltel card still has a year to go before any upgrade.
ReplyDeleteGale, we got our aircard contract 2 1/2 years ago on an unlimited promotional deal. We don't add any features to our service when we upgrade, because we want to keep our cheaper-than-currently-available service plan for our phones, and our unlimited plan for our data. I think Verizon has a data limit for aircard use now, but it is high enough that it would not be a problem for us.
ReplyDeletei want to see what kind of phone
ReplyDelete