I landed in Paris yesterday morning and was planning on making this newsletter about packing lists or French skin care or some other lighthearted subject I could navigate through my jet lag…but then fate intervened. Fate, in this instance, is T-Mobile.
Many of you probably know this, but for years T-Mobile was the preferred phone carrier for travelers because they offered free international coverage. You would just land and go. Then, a few years back — maybe post-Covid? — they downsized to free coverage at normal speeds for a certain amount of data, after which it was still free but very slow. I’m mentioning all this because when I landed yesterday I got their usual welcome to France alert, thought nothing of it, and then I left the airport and nothing. No signal. Nada. RIEN!
Fortunately I know my way home via the RER. Once here, instead of napping, I promptly called them on wifi and eventually discovered they had put a block on my international roaming. I spent most of last summer in France and it turns out T-Mobile has a new rule (buried somewhere in their updates) that you can’t be international for more than two billing cycles (there are entire reddit threads about this I discovered). Fine. Whatever. I’d been in the U.S. since Sept. Could they turn it back on?
Now get this. They cannot and would not. It turns out this ban is for LIFE. FOR LIFE. As in, there is no way for me to ever again use my phone internationally. No fee. No plan. Nada. RIEN!
“But I will just leave T-Mobile,” I say. “We understand,” they say (!!!). I am shocked, shocked, but like actually shocked…if there’s one thing you really count on in America it’s the capitalist overlord: you can buy your way out of almost everything. But not this time. T-Mobile does not want my business for any price.
So I call Verizon…or rather I go online and engage with their chat box. I then proceed to spend the rest of the afternoon trying to set up a new line, which again, you’d think would be simple, but the fact I’m in France makes it decidedly not so. (You know you have particularly good friends when you can send someone in LA a link and say, will you sign this phone contract for me, and they do so, with very little explanation needed).
After three hours in the Verizon chat box, I begin to lose my mind with all the typing and smiley faces and restarts and pitching of new products. “Is it possible to speak to an actual person on the phone?” I ask. They aren’t allowed to talk on the phone, is what I’m told by the person/bot in the box. “Ironic for a phone company, no?” I say. The person/bot does not respond.
By now, I’m late for dinner. So I do the unthinkable for me, and call an Uber. (In normal phone times, Uber is for trips to the airport. For all else, there is the bike, my feet, or the metro.) It’s not until I get downstairs and to the corner I realize that without coverage I have no way of checking who is coming for me, and from where, and at what time. (It’s like when the power goes out and you continue to flip all the switches out of habit, shocked each time that there is no light.) I run back upstairs, and discover my Uber has been cancelled. Another one will be twenty minutes. Fine, it’s pouring buckets, but I will Vélib'! (You know you have friends who know you well when, when they hear of your phone troubles, are immediately concerned about your Vélib' access). Not to worry, I have a Vélib' card. Except, when I get to the closest stand, my card is not working. My Amex is also not working. FINE I WILL METRO.
Without a phone.
I’d like to pause and dedicate what follows to Emily Marinoff, my friend and WILDER producer who spent much of last year listening to me mock her (and everyone her age) for their phone dependence. Because, actually not having a phone is not easy. In terms of the Paris metro, which I don’t actually know that well because I’m always biking, it entails reading a lot of signs, and maps, and street signs and hoping for the best.
Being phone-free is also a sort of overwhelming reminder that, not only are we all dependent on phones, but how much the the daily functioning of the world is too. I couldn’t get a car. I couldn’t check my Vélib' app. I couldn’t check the maps to make sure I was actually going to the right place. And the part that made me the most crazy, I couldn’t tell everyone I was late (so late) and was upset that they were likely worried.
It is wild how this one device dominates so much of our movement. And how, at the mercy I was/am of anonymous chat boxes to sort out this primary way of living on my behalf.
I eventually make it to dinner, and later make it back home (my Vélib' card started working again [shrug emoji]).
Fortified by wine and cheese and pasta, I call the main Verizon line and say “operator” about a hundred times until I get an actual person. “Oh my god, it’s so nice to hear a real voice,” I say as though I am being rescued from a desert island after months suffering alone. When I explain my issue, this real voice says in amazement “how did you get to me?!” It makes me think that the epic journey of attempting to speak to a real person might be the overriding folk tale of our future lives.
Whoever this real person is, he is lovely and gets another real person on the line, and they promise, just like Rose and Jack, they will not let me go until this is sorted. (Will AI figure out how to model empathy? I’m not sure if I’m more fearful that they will or they won’t.) Whatever my real life team does works…sort of. Text messages start coming through, if nothing else.
As of this writing I still don’t have a working phone. It’s possible that I will spend the entire month here living the nineties life I profess to miss so much, and this newsletter will temporarily become a time machine back to the era of pay phones…except without pay phones.
Which, I do think I weirdly am also getting a glimpse into one version of the future. Our world is no longer set up for offline life. Talking, banking, traveling. Once I leave the house, my IRL life is very cut off! There is a relief to being disconnected, admittedly, but I wonder how long it will remain enjoyable (I may find out…hello operator!). Meanwhile, my friend brought two Paris road maps for me to dinner.