A side effect of cottage cheese?

For the past 2 weeks I've gotten a few phone calls from Cellcom telling me they are placing me on a better plan, more minutes, more SMSs, less money.

I wasn't sure why they were doing that, and told them that straight out.

They said as a long time customer they wanted to keep me happy. So I agreed.

But when I got my Cellcom phone bill this month I was shocked because it was a few hundred shekels higher than expected (and higher than the previous months). One particular item that stood out was the charge for my free phone upgrade (which is why I upgraded in the first place), which turned out to be not free at all, and in fact it was quite expensive.

I called up Cellcom support quite angry. After a long wait I got through to their representative. A young-sounding Arab fellow, who heard me out.

I explained that I'm returning the phone, and who needs Cellcom with the blatant bait and switch. Cellcom knew the talk plan I was on when I upgraded the phone, and they explicitly told me that it would be free because of it.

At first he said there was nothing he could do about the phone upgrade charge, but perhaps he could help me elsewhere.

I wasn't sure, but I listened.

By the end of the discussion, he was cutting my fixed phone fees to half of what they were in previous month, and the cost of the phone upgrade (which he couldn't make go away) would be built into that total price.

Between my American accented Hebrew, and his Arabic accented Hebrew, I think we both understood each other.

He said it was important to him that I remain a satisfied Cellcom customer, and he is doing this on his personal initiative.

I'm wondering if the whole Cottage Cheese boycott has gotten some of the other Israeli companies to seriously think about their price gouging and customer satisfaction.

I'm waiting to see the next bill (and I didn't quite understand him well enough to know if it would retroactively affect this bill too), but if he did what he said, then I would say that Cellcom quickly picked up on the lessons of Tnuva.

I'll keep you updated.


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