I had my own little paging fiasco this week.
Cindy B. called. She wasn’t happy. Cindy sells auto rental insurance and works with many car dealers in Denver. She bought an alphanumeric pager on Monday so she wouldn’t miss any business from car salesmen. She specifically got an alpha pager so she could pinpoint which salesperson she needed to talk with instead of just which car dealership she needed to call.
As of Wednesday, she said she hadn’t received one page. Cindy complained to me several times that she is spending “all this money” ($30 a month) for this lack of service.
I, however, received several phone calls from people looking for Cindy. The number the paging company gave her as her new pager number is my direct line at work.
One person was ready to fax me Cindy’s new business cards, which needed final approval. A second caller was actually looking for insurance (i.e., she lost that customer) and a third call was from her paging reseller confirming that, yes, the number she was given was actually my number. I have no idea how many people called and decided not to leave messages once they were told to leave a message for Tracy Ford.
Cindy called me to ask if I could forward any more of her phone calls to her work number.
After making a few calls myself, I found out the mix-up occurred when the alphanumeric paging dispatcher for ProNet Inc. accidentally erased all of the Broomfield reseller’s paging numbers.
Cindy had a new paging number by Thursday. But her initial experience with paging technology was negative. She was one dissatisfied customer by the time I spoke with her.
The paging industry has been taking a beating lately. Wall Street doesn’t pass up an opportunity to speak pessimistically about it, arguing that customers will turn off paging to turn onto a PCS service that includes messaging service. Paging stock prices are either approaching new lows or hovering just above their 52-week lows. MobileMedia’s troubles are having a ripple effect on the industry. And SkyTel’s recent PIN disaster is shouting to the world that paging has flaws.
In the midst of all this, Cindy feels she is paying $30 a month for nothing. I wonder how long it will be until she discovers that for roughly the same price, she can buy cellular service with free voicemail.
Wake up industry. You’re going to prove the Wall Street naysayers right.
