So, my cell phone stopped working the other day. It would just shut off in the middle of a call and then it was impossible to turn the thing back on. Sometimes it would just ignore you when you pressed on, sometimes it would turn on and then turn off while it was turning on and then other times it would turn on long enough for you to think it might be useful and then it would turn off as soon as you tried to do anything. It also somehow would stop charging if you left it alone while it was charging. I don’t even know how a phone could do that. So, in short, it was screwed.

The final straw was when I was in the airport in Chicago and I was trying to call and and say my flight had been delayed an hour and it wouldn’t stay on long enough for me to get a call out. So I lost $1 to the pay phone before I ended up calling with a credit card call. 30 seconds of talking, $5 of paying.

So I researched online and picked out which phone I wanted to get and the Verizon webpage assured me that it would be free. So I went into the store, pointed to the phone and went to pay. The reason the phone was free is because I got a “new every two” deal which gave me a $100 credit. Well the guy is ringing it up and he casually mentions that my plan that I have which has way too many minutes for me to use doesn’t exist anymore so they’re just going to transfer me to the next plan up which costs $10 more per month. They said getting the new every two plan constitutes a new agreement. So essentially, to get the $100 credit, I have to pay $120 a year more for 2 years. That’s just not good math.

So I say to the guy, “Well if that’s the case then I’m not going to get this phone.” and he says to the girl next to him, “Well, does he really have to transfer his plan?” and she says, “Welllllll technically.” and he says “Well either he does or he doesn’t.” and she says, “In that case he does.” So then he turns to someone else and says, “Does he have to transfer his plan?” and they said, “Yes.” So basically I’m getting the impression that they could do something if they wanted to.

Obviously I walked out of that place. Then when we were on vacation I tried to go to another Verizon thinking that maybe these people would be more helpful. Yes and no. They said I could keep my old plan, but they told me they couldn’t give me the $100 discount because I was in a different state than what my cell phone number is. I don’t know why that would make a difference? Maybe these people just had different ways of screwing with folks.

So finally I come home and find another Verizon Wireless, this one right by my house. Those people? Fantastic! I walk right in and they hook me up with the phone and let me keep my old plan. Easy as pie, I’m in and out in like 10 minutes. It’s amazing the lengths you have to go to to get some customer service in this world…

But the good news is, I do love my new phone. It’s not as flashy as some of the ones I could have gotten, but it works with all my old chargers and stuff, and plus Sara has a Samsung too so our chargers are interchangeable. It has a camera and stuff which I could have done without, but the OS is light years ahead of my old clunky Samsung.

I even tried downloading ringtones but then, just in the nick of time, I remembered that I wasn’t a tool.

Or was I?