The tale of two paperweights

Completing my day with not one, but two paperweights.

My nightmare service with Walmart’s Straight Talk cell phone service has continued. Yes, even after receiving a replacement SIM card.  Ugh!  Over three hours on the phone with four different reps, and the problem remained.  No, sadly that was not a typo.  The last instructions I received were to do a factory reset.  Sure, why not?  At that point, I felt I had nothing more to lose.  To me, the phone was nothing more than an expensive paperweight.

The reset didn’t work, which was no real surprise.  Worse yet, it then wouldn’t do anything.  I then called Apple to see if they could run yet another diagnostic test to be sure it wasn’t the phone.  And this is where things went from bad to worse.

The first service rep had me plug the phone into my Mac computer to attempt to see what might be going on.  She had me do a few things, and then the screen of my computer froze.  No matter what she had me do, there was no budging it.  Noooo!  Before my call, I had a perfectly good working computer and now this.  As this was out of this rep’s scope, she needed to transfer me to another department.

Another hour on the phone, and no luck resolving this new issue.  I could start to see the writing on the wall.  I now had two paperweights, the newest being even more expensive than the first.  Time to call in a senior advisor.

Another hour on the phone and everything pointed to an issue with the hard drive.  I seriously now wanted to scream.  Not only did I not have a working cell phone, but now my Mac was also shot.  The silver lining, there were 32 days left on the warranty.  As awful as the situation was, I felt like I dodged a huge bullet.  The repairs will be covered in full.  The same goes for the cell phone.

Today they sent me a box and return label to use for sending the Mac.  The phone will need to be taken to UPS for boxing and shipping.  Given all the headaches I experienced during my 29 days with Straight Talk, I will not continue using them.  I’ll still have the phone serviced and will decide later what to do with it.  Perhaps I use it for running Swagbucks videos.  At this point, I don’t know.

Tomorrow I was due to reload the service plan on the phone.  I knew Straight Talk wouldn’t release my number if I didn’t have an active plan.  With that in mind, I went over to AT&T and purchased a $50 smartphone.  We already have a no-contract tablet with them for my Hubby.  Adding my new phone will increase our bill by $30, so actually a better deal than what I was paying with Straight Talk.  Additionally, they waved the activation fee. I also inquired about adding another phone for my Hubby.  Doing so would only increase it by another $20, which is about $10 cheaper than what we are currently paying with Republic Wireless.  With his current phone acting up, this will be something to consider.

My Mac is now boxed and ready to be picked up.  Thankfully, although I don’t like to use it for personal use, I do have my work pc to use while repairs are being made.  Now I have the “fun” of changing passwords that were saved to my Mac.  Although I like to believe that a repair tech wouldn’t use them, I also know better than to take any chances.

This ordeal (times two) are what nightmares are made of!  I’ll be happy to see this month come to an end.