Fool me infinity (or how I learned to stop worrying and just pay) - Part 4 - Where I am now

Hi all,

The end of the series is here, and thank you so much for bearing with me while I get this off my chest.  I don't feel as strongly about it as I did on Monday, so this has achieved wonders, in my eyes.

My old wireless provider billed in advance for services, so when I got a bill stating that I owed for services in February, I thought, "HA! that didn't happen!" and vowed to wait for the next bill, knowing as I do that computers are hard to interrupt. Silly me.

The next bill came adding $11 to the original, and that was followed up by some phone calls advising that I would be sent to collections if I didn't pay.

What I didn't read, and should have acted on, was when you port away from this wireless carrier (I don't believe one is any different than the other in this way), there is a 30 day penalty. My wireless plan was $100 a month ($115 after taxes), so my penalty was high.  If I had read this, I would have reduced my services the day before the port, and paid less of a penalty.

I railed at my carrier about this discrepancy for a long time, getting mis-information, and frustration abound, and eventually came to the conclusion that it's not worth it, I'm just going to pay and be done with it.

Question time:

1 - Are there any positive experiences that you've had with a wireless carrier?  I don't count "it just works" as positive, just neutral.

2  -Do you have any tricks that come in handy to get what you'd like out of wireless carriers?  I can supplement my non-existant bag of tricks with your tricks.

Thank you again for bearing with me!