Money can buy love – a guide to understanding cell phone contracts and the fine art of dating

It was a normal Wednesday night with two urban savvy ladies meeting for dinner, a bottle of wine and intelligent chit chat, and of course I have my cell phone out and ready (see: Get your elbows off the table) in case something comes up. I hate my cell phone; yes, you LG Shine are a piece of crap. I inherited this phone when a good friend of mine sold me his contract when he moved to Macau. (Miss you!) I pay a lot less now which is an obvious plus, but this phone makes me want to die, it turns itself off all the time, I’ve been told it’s the battery that shifts around, either way it sucks. I’ve been told to call Telus and bitch and moan, but I was already told that I won’t get a new phone because I am not on a third year plan. Nor do I want to sign a three year plan because I have no idea where I’m going to be at that point.

So this whole concept of contracts and reduced rate phones got me and my friend to thinking, what if we ran our lives like cell phone companies? Tying ourselves down with contracts but giving great discounts to lure the potential consumer sounds like a good idea in theory doesn’t it? No it really doesn’t. I’m a commitaphobe in many aspects of my life; I can’t even commit to a hairstylist or favourite toothpaste. We posited if this is kind of how dating works, let me breakdown what we discovered. Maybe I’ll even include a graph.

If you’re the kind of person who likes the have the latest gadget and aren’t one to be tied down, you have to a pay a pretty premium for a new phone without the strings. The same for a date: you want something new and casual – so in order to hang onto it for a while you need to put some substantial-ish cash down. Consequently if you’re dating an older model, say one you may already have a relationship with (maybe the ‘ideal’ happenstance that you date an old friend) you don’t have to try as hard. You have a slight guarantee of a long(er) term relationship so you don’t have to put in as much of an initial buy-in. Same with phones, if you want a slightly less flashy one that you will commit to for however long term, you don’t have to pay as much – sometimes nothing at all. But I guess we don’t have the same reassurance in dating all the time, you can’t guarantee a one, two or three-year contract with a significant other.

Then somehow the significant other is not only the phone, but also the phone company too. You call to bitch and moan and try to get more out of them, sometimes you might even threaten to leave the phone company as a way to try to win more sway. However, getting out of a relationship is like getting out of a phone contract prior to its completion; it’s not the $20/month buyout, but comparable to the emotional baggage that come attached with any break up.

So if you have to have three takeaway points from this entry remember these:

1. The LG Shine is a terrible phone
2. Read your phone contracts very carefully
3. Women do talk about smart things over a bottle of wine