Tag Archives: cell phones

Say Goodbye Gracie

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Got this little marvel in the mail:

Employees using University owned cell phone/PDAs will be taxed on the fair market value, (in this case the cost to WMU), of the phone and plan.  All applicable payroll taxes will be applied.  For phones and devices already in use, we will tax the value of the plan only.  In order to properly account for University monies used to pay for dual use cell phones and ensure the fringe benefits are taxed properly, the voucher given to accounts payable to pay for such phone service must include or have attached a detail of the names and employee numbers of the employees and the respective amounts being paid for their phone/device.  For plans where the cost isn’t already broken down by phone, you will need to allocate the total cost to the phones if you are not already doing so for general ledger posting purposes.  Accounts payable will submit the cost information to the payroll department after they review to make sure all the cost is being accounted for.    Departments that are paying for University owned cell phones with a procurement card should submit the same information to the payroll department on a monthly basis.  No department should be paying for a non-University owned cell phone plan with a procurement card.

So on February 1st I will be surrendering my line at 269-599-7798. This will conclude my mobile telephony reach as well. I will most likely not be having any other phone as I cannot afford one. As a practical upshot to this, after February 1st I will be unavailable to telephone traffic for quite some time. There won’t be a replacement number as I don’t have the funds available to afford to replace such technology. If I am not at my office, I won’t be reachable. In the case of emergencies, they will have to be queued and held for me until I reach a place where I can access telephony equipment. Likewise, if I have an emergency I will be unable to call 911. Lets hope we don’t run into any of that sort of thing. This is 21st Century progress at it’s finest, folks. Let us rejoice.

As for our business mobile infrastructure?

Say Goodbye Gracie.

Sprint Bork

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Today has been quite an annoying exploration in the vagaries of 20th Century POTS bullshit. My assistant has been on the phone for the better portion of the day with various Sprint representatives trying to get our latest Blackberry device for our new VP to work properly. The phone came with the exchange 363, which when you dial it using any regular phone line ends up in a doo-dee-tiii (computer gobbledygook sounds). Sprint claimed they couldn’t do anything about the problem, so Andy had them switch the number to a brand new one, another 363 number, and the same problem. In the end we switched an old number onto the VP’s device using the 599 exchange, oh would you look at that, damn thing works! Really what it comes down to is that we don’t want to have to dial 269-363-yadayadayada, we want to dial 363-yadayadayada. It’s not that complicated of a thing to figure out now! Of course Sprint’s response was “contact the other POTS companies and complain to them!” Really Sprint? How about YOU DO IT YOU LAZY BASTARDS! Yeah, one little teeny tinny voice is going to command Qwest or SBC Ameritech or Verizon or … to hut right to it and correct a local-exchange switching error. While we’re at it, Sprint, I’ll be sure to refine our ability to FART RAINBOWS!

So what did we learn from this interaction with Sprint? That they’d much rather ignore a POTS problem and let their customers agonize over it rather than take the !@#$ high-road and own the problem and FIX IT THEMSELVES. I suppose I do make a little tactical error here, in that Sprint apparently no longer considers itself a POTS company, no-no-no! It’s a Telecommunications Experience Synergizer. Or something.

To the rumors and all the hints and allegations that Verizon will have an iPhone in January, we say “Oh God YES!” It’s things like this that add ammunition to my professional recommendation that Sprint be fled-from as soon as possible.