So I visit the local Verizon store to see if there’s anything they can do about my schizophrenic RAZR. It’s a shitty phone to begin with, the only phone I know where you can set up the alarm to Mon-Fri and it will still wake you up on Saturday. Recently it got worse and the phone developed some glitches that to the untrained eye (and the untrained I) look like hardware problems.
The first person to greet me at the store cracks open the battery door and inspects the white dot. It’s red on both sides, indicating the phone came in contact with water. I use the phone. I carry it with me. So yes, it came in contact with some unsavory things, mostly asphalts and concrete. Water, I don’t remember, unless you count sweaty fingers pressing against the was-white dot every time I replace the battery.
So here I am, not even logged into the system, and being on the receiving end of a “pin the blame” game.
A few minutes later one of the customer reps calls my name and I’m off of the tech counter. I hand them the phone, and they proceed with the ceremonial unveiling of the not-all-white dot, after which the conversation goes something like this:
Rep: What’s wrong with it?
Me: A few things. The Bluetooth dies after ten minutes, and …
Rep: Do you have the bluetooth device with you?
Me: No.
Rep: Then we can’t diagnose it.
Me: I tested with a couple of devices, the problem is with the phone.
Rep: We need the bluetooth device.
I look around. I’m standing in the middle of a Verizon store. I can see that one wall is covered with headsets. Another wall is covered with potential pairing devices. In front of me, presumably equipped technical lab.
Me: So you don’t have a device to test it with?
Rep: No.
Me: [do I laugh? do I cry? is it April already?]
Me: Well, it worked for over a year, and then about a month ago started developing these problems.
Rep: So by your own admission you’ve had this phone over a year, so now the phone is out of warranty.
Me: Are you here to help me or sue me?
Ok, I didn’t say the last line, but being the defendant in this trial I decided to appeal to a superior judgement and involved a manager. Once again we go through the ceremony and the discussion turns into the lack of available bluetooth devices. I decide to break it up and remind them both that I originally complained about “a few things”. So we go over all the other issues.
The court reminds me that the phone is no longer under warranty. Yes, it did lock me into a two year service agreement under penalty of law, but the phone is only serving half that sentence. I smell a class action lawsuit.
So we’re back to reviewing my options. The device is not built to be fixed, and is not priced to be replaced, Verizon has long left the business of selling equipment and is now in the contract industry, so I can’t even offer to pay for a working one. But the court is sympathetic to my needs. Again, I mis-quote from memory:
Manager: So what do you want us to do?
Me: I’m trying to figure out my options.
Manager: We can upgrade your phone with new software.
Me: I want to know what do do about the display going blank.
Manager: This is an old phone and it needs a software upgrade.
Manager: Motorolla listens to customer complains and fixes these issues with software upgrades.
Me: [we've switch from the blame game to make believe, follow up!]
Manager: You look like you’re technical, so you must understand that upgrading the software can fix old problems.
Me: [especially hardware problems! see, I can play this game]
Me: So let’s do that. Can you give me a list of changes?
Manager: Excuse me?
Me: A list of what changes with the upgrade.
Manager: I can’t give you that. You can go online to the Verizon Web site and check it yourself.
Me: You can’t give me that.
Manager: Was that sarcasm?
Me: Yes.
Though at this point the tone was sarcasm, the feeling was despair. And just before my phone disappears into the operating room, the manager decides to voice out that “this may not fix the display problem”. Damn, I was getting good in this make believe game.
Anyway, I’m in the waiting room, patient is still inside, taking advantage of the great EV-DO coverage inside the store, and searching for that official change list that can’t be disclosed. Not on Google. Or Motorolla if you can figure out their mess of a site. Or Verizon which is still undecided whether my phone is a v3c (for billing purposes) or v3m (for support issues).
According to the good folks in the Howard forums, I can expect a fix to a (different) bluetooth glitch, a few more hours of sleep every Saturday, and different colors on the UI.
Well, I’m happy to report that indeed the UI colors are different.
I might just have to buy a better taken care of, no obvious sweaty finger marks, RAZR off eBay. I’m pretty set on getting the same phone. You see, while waiting for my turn in techell I decided to play with some of the phones on display. Starting with the new LG, aka RAZR done better, and only $350 boxed. I tried the soft keys, and the hard keys, and the myriad of menus, even the contact list but I couldn’t find how to start the Web browser(*). And in those few minutes of not finding the Web I managed to freeze up the phone.
So yeah, the RAZR may be a buggy phone, but I’d rather stick with the bugs I know.
(* Turns out that was a glitch caused by my ginormously regular-sized fingers hitting the decorative navigation keys on the LG. Still it’s a lovely phone for people who need form over function)
Photo by SocialBreakfast
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