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When I decided to get T-Mobile’s Sidekick 3, I was wooed by the phone’s sexy features, which were smoothly integrated into the phone unlike lesser phones running Microsoft’s crappy mobile OS. However, it didn’t take long before I realized that though the Sidekick Paris Hilton 3000 (PH3k) could do most everything I wanted my phone to do, it couldn’t send or receive picture messages. This was not a limitation imposed by Danger, who produces the PH3k, but rather by T-Mobile, who’s mysterious desire to fuck their own customers is as confusing as Hitler killing 6+ million of his own people. Why would a Wookie want to live on Endor?

There’s no real answer to this mind-boggling question. At least when the PH3k was released, one could login to T-Mobile’s online picture site, and view any pictures sent to the PH3k. One would know to do this because after being sent a picture, T-Mobile would kindly tell the user to login to t-mobilepictures.com to view what a friend sent them. After a short time, however, the feature was disabled.

The issue never irked me much; I could send and receive photos my e-mail, and it was rare that someone sent me a picture message anyway. Lately, however, the amount of pictures sent to me has increased dramatically, which I blame in no small part on the massive proliferation of picture-capable cell phones in the hands of women, who love to share pictures of things.

So I call T-Mobile using their handy 6-1-1 number. I’m on hold for quite a long while. The tier-1 support person can’t help me, and notices only the words “Sidekick” and “picture messaging” before she bumps me to tier-2 support, who is also a “Sidekick expert”. And so I talk to this expert, who feeds me a line of bullshit coated in half-truths.

Apparently, the web-based picture messaging system getting into the PH3k armada was a glitch that “entered the computer system”. After locating this glitch, the geniuses at T-Mobile decided to disable the service, even though they have thus far been unable to disable the text message that gets sent to users to check t-mobilepictures.com whenever a picture message is sent to them. The “expert” fails to figure in that the whole point of the web-based picture service is to make up for the lack of picture-receiving capabilities on the phones themselves, and why one service could be shut down, but the other could not.

The self-recognized “expert” also fails to factor in that I know what “DSL” and “broadband” mean, because I have a tech degree and don’t work in shitty tech support. So the “expert” throws around these two terms amidst other acronyms that make no sense in the context of his explanation designed to confuse customers who are not tech savvy. And in the end, T-Mobile has given me no reasonable explanation as to why they decided to make a good prodect less good, and then cripple the only saving grace behind not receiving picture messages natively. Assholes.

The whole affair is rather sad, because I like T-Mobile, and I like the PH3k. And yet, the former cripples the latter by disabling picture messages, full bluetooth functionality, and custom ringtones. The latter of these three is a money-making plan that just angers consumers, while the other two are plain stupid. It’s like there’s a drunken monkey, who is also retarded, sitting somewhere high up in the T-Mobile corporate towers, raining down decisions that he has no right to make.

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