U.S. Cellular shuns Google sms search then promotes it

As a former U.S. Cellular employee I experienced first hand the shady business practices U.S. Cellular uses against their customer base. I worked for the carrier for about 8 months through a reseller agent program. Often I looked for ways to get people to want to sign up for service to earn some commission and move some handsets.

I heard about Google sms search service enabling sms search queries to be sent to GOOGL (46645 ) and the results to be sent back to your phone via sms message (for FREE). I thought what a great selling point and began to promote it to anyone who would listen. Shortly there after I was approached by a very interested and curious “customer” who must have asked 100+ questions. I have always loved cell phone technology and have never turned down a question from anyone about cell phones. When the topic of Google’s sms rolled off my tongue he became even more intrigued and continued to probe. Two days later my supervisor informed me to stop telling people about Google sms and was placed on a probationary period. The reason was they want their customers to get charged for use of EasyEdge (their data service).Apparently a secret shopper had reported me to be not only telling people how to use the service but also to use MMC card enabled phones to not pay for photo retrieval which is another post in itself. Now this really puzzled me as to why they would not want to highlight this great feature, however I complied and conformed and stopped talking about it. I no longer work for them but still have service through them via my ball and chain 2yr contract. I recently went into their retail store to pay a bill and noticed a small flyer actually promoting Google sms search services. Apparently they saw the advantages of using this as a selling feature and began to welcome it with open arms. I just wanted to share that with my readers and alert them to the tactics used by U.S. Cellular to milk their customers for more cash.