Sprint

In early August, I noticed that our Sprint mobile service phone bill was about three times its normal amount. Obviously, I was shocked by the total when I saw it online. You don't often see a monthly phone bill for over $750 these days. Needless to say, I immediately started investigating. 

It turns out that we had over $500 in unexpected international calls on the bill.

Let me start by saying my family is global and it is not unusual for us to have to pay for some international calls. My field is global politics and I traveled to Canada, Belgium, Ireland, and the UK in the recent past for various academic gigs -- or vacations. Altogether, I spent about 6 months of my recent sabbatical outside the US.

Moreover, my wife's father was a US Foreign Service office, which makes her side of the family even more globally-oriented. Her sister has lived in the UK for most of the time I've known my wife. 

When we travel abroad, we typically set up our mobile phones for international calling and texting. We've also paid for a similar service when calling abroad from the US. Sprint has a reasonably priced plan that customers (at least in the past) can change month-to-month. It is one of the reasons we have remained as Sprint customers for about 15 years. I think my spouse got the first Sprint mobile phone in our family back in 2005 when I had a sabbatical at Harvard.

However, I'd probably leave today but for three lease contracts we currently carry on various phones.

In this case, it turned out that one of my daughters had to cancel a European flight on one of those discount Euro airlines. Before the pandemic, she had planned to visit her aunt and family in the UK, then fly from there to Spain. The discount airline didn't have a US 800 number and my daughter didn't realize we currently didn't have international calling on our phones.

Worse, she didn't realize that Sprint was charging $3 per minute for the 3 hours she was on hold to that discount airline. 

The phone bill MASSIVELY exceeded the price of the flight tickets she was trying to cancel and/or change. 

If we were paying the modest sum for international calling, the cost would have been 25 cents per minute (still ridiculous these days) and would have been less than $100 even with the exorbitant taxes and fees mobile phone companies charge their customers. The precise cost would have depended if the monthly fee would have been applied to only one line, or if we would have had to pay for 4 lines of international calling.

If we only had to pay for one line for one month, the total cost would have been something like $65.  That's about 13% of what they actually charged, so it is obvious that the $500 charge was simply profiteering from the situation.

I called Sprint when I saw the bill and asked for some relief since we had been longtime good customers and this was an honest mistake. Indeed, more than that, I argued, Sprint had failed in a number of ways here.

As it happens, my daughter split the calls over two days. She was on hold for over an hour on July 21, gave up, and called that airline back on July 22 -- only to be on hold for even longer, resulting in a call that lasted just over two hours.

I argued to Sprint that my credit card company, (let that sink in) -- my CREDIT CARD FROM A BANK -- would have alerted me to unusual activity on my account after the first incident, which was billed at about $180. They likely would have frozen my account. For god's sake, Sprint itself could have sent an email advising me to buy the international plan if we intended to continue making such expensive calls.

But nothing. Total silence from Sprint in July. I only learned of the cost when I checked the bill online before it was due.

My persistence on the phone on August 9 resulted in slow incremental credits to our account as I was passed from one associate to a supervisor to a manager to a customer service specialist, etc. 

In the end these representatives credited a flat $200. 

That means Sprint still billed $300 for 180 minutes, which works out to about $1.67 per minute. In 2020! Ridiculous.

My wife called her sister this morning for an hour using the free Duo app on her phone, got to talk to the niece and nephews with video, and was billed NOTHING extra as the call simply used the internet. 

If you are not familiar, there are "dial around" services that consumers can buy that reduce the costs of international long distance to pennies per minute. This article recommends AGAINST dial around because it costs nearly a dime per minute (a DIME!) and that cost is significantly more than it would cost simply to use Voip. 

During the negotiations with various reps, I asked if Sprint would retroactively bill us for international calling and charge the full amount for the 3 hours of calling. It would have been $100 maximum. Maybe only $65 if the fee was applied to merely one line.

Sprint refused.

Then, I explained to the various Sprint representatives that I thought a minimum fair outcome would be for us to pay the costs for the first hour and for the company to credit the costs for the final two hours the following day since it had made no effort to warn customers about the ridiculous prices it was charging for international calling.

I still would have been unhappy paying an extra $180, but it would have been better than paying another $120 on top of that. 

Sprint refused to budge from the $200 credit.

And so we paid, but I am now unhappy about our phone service, and I've actively looked at switching providers. When those phone contracts are finished, Sprint is likely to lose the 4 customers on our family plan. My daughters are in their 20s, so this might mean decades of lost revenue over somewhere between $120 and $335 in remaining disputed charges.

So much for the old maxim, "the customer is always right."

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COVID 19 and ISA

Posted March 25: On March 8, I wrote the following note to a colleague who wondered why I was thinking about withdrawing from the ISA conference in Honolulu, scheduled for March 25-28. S/he was comparing the virus to the flu and noted Hawaii's lack of cases at the time. I have slighted edited it to fix typos, add links, and assure anonymity of individuals.
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I understand the flu risk argument and Hawaii’s lack of cases. However, the lack of cases is likely because of lack of testing. The US really dropped the ball on this with delays in preparation, a flawed first test, and an illogical containment strategy. Many experts are now saying containment obviously failed in many communities and it is time to consider mitigation of community spread.

The logic: The doubling rate for known cases outside China is every 4 days. Given the number of deaths in the US (20 now, I think), between 450 and 2000 people likely have the disease already. Nearly 500 have tested positive. The NYT reported yesterday that nearly 2800 New Yorkers are in self-quarantine. There are 76 in Hawaii. The Atlantic Monthly reports that fewer than 2000 people have been tested in the entire US – only 16 tested as of yesterday in Hawaii. If the true number of current cases is merely 500 people right now, we could still have 1 million US cases in 6 to 8 weeks time if the status quo prevails. There are serious concerns the virus could quickly outstrip the health system’s ability to function. This thread is from someone who used to work at CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer: https://twitter.com/Farzad_MD/status/1236393626760032257
With testing just about to ramp up, many experts say the number of US cases is about to “explode” as the CDC guy wrote.

I actually have a personal story that illustrates the poor planning** in the US so far:  I had a colleague return from a research trip to Wuhan on December 14. We had beers together a week later at a popular local bar and socialized again together on New Year’s eve. By late January, however, the news coming from China was of such concern that the University required recent returnees from China to spend 14 days at home in quarantine. Of course, for people in my friend's social circle, the horse would have already been out of the barn if he was infected. 

Until this week, no one in Kentucky had been tested for the virus. They’ve tested 14 across the entire state and identified only 1 person with the virus. What scientists don’t really know with certainty is if asymptomatic people could be carrying and spreading the disease. 

That’s really the problem. Who knows?

And the risks are worrisome.

The evidence not only seems to suggest that that virus spreads much more quickly and readily than the flu (because of airborne droplets) – but that it is perhaps 20 times as lethal. I had the flu vaccine in the fall, but there is no vaccine against this virus. Even though the lethality is greater for the elderly, people in my age bracket are still dying at a 10-fold rate. With flu, about 1% of people end up in the hospital with a serious respiratory problem. With COVID 19 it is more like 15 to 20%. That’s largely why the health systems could be broken with a huge outbreak (to flu-like levels of cases).

Mitigation measures are going to become fairly draconian for the US:

Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said today on Meet the Press that “You don't want to go to a massive gathering, particularly if you're a vulnerable individual. If we continue to see the community spread go up I think you need to seriously look at anything that's a large gathering.”

Austin, Texas, canceled its annual South by Southwest event. Numerous universities are ending travel outside the CONUS. The Physics people canceled their large meeting in Denver. A friend who works in Department of Energy in DC told me that all work travel has been suspended. Someone tested positive who had just attended the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) conference, where both Trump and Pence spoke.  

The Trump administration is still insisting that we are in containment mode, which means 14 day quarantines. Thus, if anyone at the ISA conference develops symptoms and tests positive, attendees could end up spending weeks in quarantine [Hawaii subsequently ordered all arrivals to the island to quarantine]. Even healthy people from the first cruise ship were quarantined for about a month (2 weeks offshore or in Japan and 2 weeks in the US).

I don’t think I’m especially alarmist.

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** "Poor planning" compared to Taiwan, for example, a democratic partner of the US, which learned about the disease in December and began its countermeasures at that time: "As early as the beginning of December, Taiwanese health officers started boarding flights arriving from Wuhan to check passengers for symptoms before they could leave the plane."

"Poor planning" also in that US public health officials could have immediately starting investigating recent arrivals from Wuhan, China, and finding out if those people, family members, or contacts in their social circle had unusual illnesses in December, January, or February. Top policymakers and members of Congress certainly received briefings about the dangers that early and some were worried: From Senator Richard Blumental (D-CT) after the January 24 briefing the Senate received: “We are far from having this potential epidemic under control. We should be worried and concerned about this potential epidemic as a nation” 

Sadly, it appears the negligence started at the top: "President Donald Trump ignored reports from US intelligence agencies starting in January that warned of the scale and intensity of the coronavirus outbreak in China, The Washington Post reported Friday."


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DVD Pick

Last night, my spouse and I watched "Searching for Sugar Man," the 2013 Oscar winning documentary. It is a terrific story and the film is well worth your time.

I first learned about this movie last summer when it was the opening night feature for the Traverse City Film Festival. We were unable to attend then, but I made a note to check out the film later.

If you don't know anything about the movie, it concerns a late 1960s and early 1970s Detroit rock musician named Rodriguez who released a couple of albums that quickly faded into obscurity in the US. However, someone apparently took a copy of one of his albums to South Africa and through word of mouth the record became a hit there. The film strongly implies that the musician's records sold half a million copies in South Africa -- though no one really knew anything about the musician since he did not become popular or famous in the U.S. It is a very strange case of globalization at work.

Much of the film focuses on the efforts of a journalist and some other amateur detectives to track down Rodriguez. Various rumors suggested that he had killed himself on stage -- either by revolver or self-immolation. Indeed, other than liner notes and song credits, those searching for Rodriguez had very few real leads to pursue. They start with the record companies and attempt to follow the money back to someone who would know about the singer-guitarist. The "Sugar Man" in the title refers to one of Rodriguez's songs.

The film provides an interesting account of the conclusion of the search and strongly suggests that someone benefited a great deal from the sale of Rodriguez records in South Africa. However, it was not the musician or his family.

Here's the film's trailer:



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Global Film

Last night, I watched "Outsourced," a 2006 film that was the original source material for a short-lived television situation comedy of the same name. I never watched the TV program, but the film was well-reviewed, so I gave it a try.

"Outsourced" turned out to be an entertaining film about a young man working in phone sales (his shop fills orders) who must travel to India to train workers to replace displaced American workers. As a double ironic twist, the company sells mostly "patriotic knick-knack" that is made in China. It might make a good double feature with "The Coca-Cola Kid," a movie I last saw in the 1980s.

While I am unlikely to screen this movie in my "Global Politics Through Film" class, I will certainly add it to the list of acceptable films for students to review. The movie hints at the economic forces behind outsourcing, reveals interesting cultural aspects of globalization, and specifically addresses the notion that "globalization is Americanization" (or perhaps westernization).

Perhaps most importantly, the film reminded me of this chart I saw last month in the Atlantic Monthly:

Chart source: The Atlantic Monthly, May 2011. 

In 2010, the U.S. had less than a one-third share of the world film market. A half dozen or so wealthy (and mostly western) states accounted for roughly another one-third of that market and the BRIC states were just under one-sixth (14.6%). 

The globalization of the film industry will undoubtedly continue to have a large effect on the content of movies -- influencing character development, narrative storyline, etc.



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The Real Thing

These are the Coca-Cola marketing slogans I recall from my childhood:

# 1963 - Things go better with Coke.
# 1966 - Coke ... after Coke ... after Coke.
# 1969 - It's the real thing.
# 1971 - I'd like to buy the world a Coke.

Fareed Zakaria explains that the company's early global impulses have now flowered. The world has returned the favor and now buys a lot of Coke:

The companies on the S&P 500 generate 46% of their profits outside the U.S., and for many of the biggest American names, the proportion is much higher. You might think of Coca-Cola as the quintessentially American company. In fact it is a vast global enterprise, operating in 206 countries. "We have a factory in Ramallah that employs 2,000 people. We have a factory in Afghanistan. We have factories everywhere," explains Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coke. Nearly 80% of Coca-Cola's revenue comes from outside the U.S., and an even greater percentage of its employees are in foreign countries. "We are a global company that happens to be headquartered in Atlanta," says Kent.

Lots of "American" companies are creating far more jobs abroad than domestically in the current recovery.

I'm not sure what this says about sales of Mecca Cola.


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Sugar

"Sugar" may be the best film about baseball that I've seen. It is a realistic story of a young pitcher from the Dominican Republic who is invited to spring training in the USA and then assigned to a low minor league team in small-town Iowa.

The film focuses attention on the agents and leagues operating in Latin America, as well as the immigrant experience in America. Indeed, the film would have been perfect for my "Globalization (and Baseball)" course that I taught during fall 2003. After all, I assigned Stealing Lives by Arturo J. Marcano Guevara and David P. Fidler, which tells the story of sweatshop baseball labor throughout Latin America.

Former Cincinnati Reds ace Jose Rijo plays a fairly prominent role in the movie. Apparently, presuming the film is accurate, baseball has upgraded the facilities in the Dominican Republican because Marcano Guevara and Fidler describe players working and living in squalor.

As you might expect, the film gives some attention to steroids. Most importantly, it emphasizes the precarious position of young men in Latin America pursuing an unlikely dream. The movie also shows the advantages granted to the million dollar draftee ("Brad Johnson") from Stanford. He teaches the main character about the life and work of former Latin star Roberto Clemente, who said: "Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don't, then you are wasting your time on Earth."


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