Wireless Mayhem
I’ve been working on (and sometimes ignoring) a rewrite of my Nokia Image Upload Server code, but that isn’t the only thing that’s been happening with my phone.
You’ll notice that I’ve been snapping images with it as fast as ever, and if you’re even more eagle-eyed you might be able to tell that the images are a little more clearer. There’s a reason for this, of course, but like with any good reason, there’s an even better story behind it.
Two Fridays ago (April 2nd), Erin and I went to the first Diamondbacks game this year at Bank One Ballpark. This was not the season opener, because it was just an exhibition game, but it was the first game in the park this season. But I digress. During the game, I took and uploaded this picture. Shortly afterwards, I put my phone in my pocket. After we left the game, I removed the phone from my pocket and… it had turned itself off.
Now that by itself is not strange. My phone turns itself off fairly often, usually after getting bumped on something. It’s possible that I had hit the corner of a stadium seat, or a doorway, or something with the phone in my pocket, knocking the phone unconscious. So I turned the phone back on… but it didn’t come back up all the way.
What I did get was this message: “Phone start-up failed. Contact retailor.” Not good. I turned the phone back off and then back on. No dice. Pulled the battery out, then tried again. Nope. Different combinations of having the sim card and the MMC card in. Nope. Fully charged? No love.
The next day, I took the phone into the same AT&T Wireless store where I bought it. The clerk there took one look at the message on the phone, declared he had seen nothing like it before, and gave me the number for AT&T Wireless’ warranty replacement center.
Calling the number got me the same type of reaction. Lots of reading of numbers off the back of the phone. Lots of repeating of the start-up message I got. And bewilderment at what could be causing it. But they finally decided to send me a new one… with several caveats:
- The phone may come without a battery cover, faceplate, or keypad. I should use my existing one to replace missing parts.
- Someone needed to be home all day to wait for the UPS man, or it was up to the driver’s discretion whether or not to leave me my phone.
- I had to put my existing sim and MMC cards and battery into the new phone, and call AT&T Wireless’ customer care number to get it activated — along with that number’s standard 30 minute hold time.
- I had 48 hours to send back my old phone using the provided shipping materials, or they would charge me for the replacement.
- If, upon receiving my old phone, they weren’t “satisfied” with its condition (too many scratches, etc), they would charge me for the replacement.
On Tuesday, I received my new phone. After getting home from work, I inserted my sim and MMC cards, battery, battery cover, keypad, and faceplate into the new phone, and fired it up. Lo and behold, it worked! It even signed right onto the AT&T Wireless network as me, immediately allowing me to place and receive calls — no call to customer care needed (I understand this is the magic of sim cards).
I was able to send the old phone back using the same box it came in. They provided a pre-paid shipping label that I could place on top of the old one, and they even gave me a strip of packing tape to seal the box back up with. A simple trip to the post office to drop it off (no waiting necessary) was all that was needed. I haven’t gotten a bill for the cost of the replacement or anything, but I assume that I won’t. After the initial pain-in-the-ass part of it, they really did a good job of making it easy.
But I can’t help thing that it could have been easier…
The woman on the phone from the warranty replacement center diagnosed this as a software problem — and I agree. Presumably, my new phone has newer software on it than my old phone, or at least a non-hosed install. I should have been able to go into my local AT&T Wireless store, and have them reimage my phone right there. For free. I had a recent backup of my phone’s data (God bless Bluetooth, eh?), so I didn’t really lose anything. So I would have preferred that they could just fix it immediately. And I’m sure they could, technically. For some reason, though, they choose not not.
Which brings me back to my original point. I now have a brand new phone (or at least, the bits that matter). That means that my camera, and lens are unscratched. Which means my pictures are sharper and clearer. Yes, that’s not very exciting. Sorry you had to sit through all this just to find that out — but it’s good for you. Builds character.
1 Comment