I’ve been wanting to get a Treo 650 every since the Treo 600 was announced almost two years ago. The Treo 650 adds my missing feature—Bluetooth—and the high-resolution screen and faster processor helped clinch the deal. PalmOne announced the 650 last October, but my wireless plan is with Cingular (formerly AT&T Wireless), who just started carrying on February 2nd. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to get one. Each attempt yields less success than the previous attempt, and mainly seems to have the affect of wasting my time and raising my stress level.

I currently have a multi-line AT&T Wireless voice plan, with two phones. One of them (mine) has an $8/month data plan. Ideally, I would just replace my phone with a Treo 650 and be done with it. My employer has a deal whereby I get a discounted monthly rate with Cingular, so the first thing I did was call the Cingular “Formerly AT&T Wireless” National Business Ordering center. I got a helpful sales rep who informed me that they had the phone available, but I couldn’t put it on a multi-line voice plan. Not only that, but I would need a data plan at a minimum of $20/month. In other words, they won’t sell me the phone without my giving them an extra $40 each month. This is the point where I have to restrain myself from yelling at the phone, and politely hang up.

So much for “Premier” business service: after three nearly identical calls to the NBO over two weeks, I gave up that idea. I was never really comfortable with the idea of buying the AT&T Wireless (“Cingular Blue”) version of the Treo 650 anyway, since it would be locked to AT&T Wireless SIM cards, and if I ever needed to change my plan in a way that would require a Cingular SIM, my smartphone would become an expensive paperweight.

One of my co-workers suggested that instead of getting the phone through the NBO, I could walk into a Cingular store and get one: Cingular lets you put the Treo on a multi-line plan, I would still get my company discount, and I’d have a future-proof “Cingular Orange” version of the Treo 650. The Cingular Web site even offered the 650 with the voice plan I wanted, and a $25/month unlimited data plan, which I established years ago as the price at which I’d spring for one. The only downsides are that since I’d have to switch my plan to Cingular, Laura would have to get a new phone too, and that I’d have to find a Cingular store with one in stock. Those are both manageable problems.

Earlier this afternoon, I called the Palo Alto Cingular store—the former AT&T Wireless location where I bought my current phone—and discovered that they had the Treo 650 in stock. I drove over immediately. The store was packed, I waited about half an hour for a salesperson, who finally told me that the cheapest data plan I could get with the Treo 650 was $29/month, for a paltry 5 megabytes of data. She insisted the plan I saw on the Cingular Web site was not for smartphones, despite the fact that it was specifically offered to me when I priced the Treo 650.

So I give up. Cingular has managed to make it far too difficult for me to give them money. There are still ways for me to get the phone, I suppose. I could give in and pay too much money a month for a data plan I don’t need. I could spend an extra $300 and buy the unlocked GSM version of the phone from PalmOne (I had almost decided to do this a few weeks ago, just before reading that PalmOne had raised the unlocked price from $599 to $699.) I could even switch to Sprint. Right now, though, I feel discouraged enough that I’m not sure I want to bother trying anymore.

I know next to nothing about economics. Let me make that clear up front. So I get fascinated by what I’m sure are very basic concepts. In his recent article Camels and Rubber Duckies, Joel Spolsky talks about “consumer surplus,” which he describes as “the extra value that those rich consumers got from their purchase that they would have been perfectly happy to do without.” He says that “capitalists want to capture the consumer surplus” by trying to make customers who can afford it pay more for the exact same product than those who can’t.

I got a first-hand account of this today. Yesterday, our car was involved in an accident, and is in the service shop getting fixed up. My insurance company pays for a rental car, so this morning I went to Hertz to get one. The agent there informed me that my insurance would pay for a compact car, but they were running a promotion where if I paid extra, I could get my choice of car. I said I was happy with the compact car. After consulting the computer, he told me that for only $5 more per day, I could rent a Nissan Altima, which was a nice big full-size car. I told him I wasn’t interested, and he went out to get the car my insurance would cover. When he came back in and handed me the keys, he told me he was upgrading me to the Altima free of charge.

It’s obvious to me that the Altima was the cheapest car he had on the lot, and he was going to have to rent it to me even at the compact-car rate. I’m not sure whether to be annoyed at the sleazy sales tactics, or to admire the gusto with which he tried to get me to pay more for the exact same car I was going to get anyway.

On Usenet recently (I don’t remember where or when), on an unrelated subject, I witnessed someone drop in several derogatory references to The West Wing. They had apparently seen the show a few times, and absolutely deplored it, failing to understand why anyone intelligent could like it. From what I could gather, their own political leanings were in the opposite direction from the shows’ characters, and they were unable to watch the show objectively, without seeing it as an hour-long commercial for politics they disagreed with.

I can understand this. In fact, as I pondered it, I began to wonder how any conservative might enjoy The West Wing. I do align myself more closely with the shows’ protagonists, and I could imagine being too bothered by a series which approved of contrasting values to enjoy a well-produced episode. But in the absence of evidence—does Mister Sterling count? He was definitely far more conservative than Bartlet, and I enjoyed a few episodes of that show—it’s hard to be sure.

One available example does come to mind: I enjoy watching The Sopranos. HBO’s ratings, DVD sales and Emmy wins show I’m not alone. Yet I can’t imagine that any large fraction of that show’s viewers believe that what its protagonists do is moral or admirable. Realistically, I can’t believe I’d rather feel more comfortable watching a show about a mob boss than a Republican. Which isn’t to say that everyone feels that way. I’d imagine there are, in fact, plenty of people who can’t appreciate The Sopranos due to its subject matter, and I can understand that.