Who Ya Gonna Call? Phone's Busted!

The Pony had a mishap at work on Monday. So sad. He'd been looking forward to Monday, he said, because,  

 

"The temperature is only going to be in the SEVENTIES! Even if it rains, I won't mind. I don't care about getting wet. It's just the heat."

Before noon, I had a text from The Pony:

"Not a good day. Phone fell onto gravel, several big cracks. Touch screen is a bit unreliable now. Back to work."

Ten minutes later, The Pony asked me to consult Genius, our no-longer-resident phone guru, on what model replacement would be best. Genius says he's out of the android loop, so just an updated version of The Pony's Samsung Galaxy should be sufficient.

THEN commenced the quest to procure a phone for The Pony. Nothing is ever easy around the Mansion. The Pony had scheduled Tuesday off, in case Farmer H needed him to drive to a medical procedure at 5:15 a.m. The Veteran had said for weeks that he would do it, but just in case, Farmer H planned ahead. So The Pony figured he'd go get a new phone on Tuesday.

However... the only names on the account are HM and Farmer H. Sprint is a real rumpus about letting people buy phones without being on the account. Even if people plan to buy the phone outright, and not be billed monthly. So I put in a call to see if I could add The Pony, since I didn't know if he would go to the store over in Bill-Paying Town, or the one near the city.

Of course all representatives were busy helping other customers. I could stay on the line for 5 minutes OR MORE to get a rep. Or I could hang up and have my place in line saved, and the first available rep would call me. Nope. I know how THAT goes. They DON'T call, and then I'd have to call back again, with a new place in the queue, and start over. So I stayed on the line, and in 15 minutes I got a rep.

She was very polite, and enunciated clearly, but I had trouble understanding her Asian accent. I'm not good at hearing directions anyway. I'm better at reading them myself. So her slightly different pronunciations, and different emphasis on different syllables, and different cadence of speaking, made me stop and ask her to repeat. It was going okay until she said she needed my password and user name and PIN. 

Every time I deal with the Sprint account, I have to reset the password. It's a pain in the rumpus. Besides, Genius last used it to take himself off our account. We switch between three different passwords, but I didn't know which one he had it under. Didn't really matter, because if I was going online for the account, I'd have to reset anyway.

This Gal said when she picked up that she saw I was calling from my phone. Which I WAS. It worked in the house! I'm sure that's because I held my head to the side for those 15 minutes of wait, not daring to move and lose the connection. So I didn't understand WHY she said she couldn't do anything else until she had those three things.

"Well, then I might as well hang up. Because I DON'T have them here. No. I can't go get them. We are done, because even though I answered the security question on the account, and have given you other information about the three phones and users on it, that's not enough. So I'll just go along with my son to buy his phone."

"I am trying to complete this addition to your account."

"I know that. But I don't have the information you say you have to have. So there's no point in continuing."

"I will try another way. I'm going to send you a security number on the phone you say you are using."

"You already said you could SEE I was using that phone. But okay. Am I going to have to read it to you?"

"Yes. That's the point."

"Well, good luck to me on not cutting you off. I'm not good at switching from a call to doing other stuff, and then finding the call again."

SWEET GUMMI MARY! I only was able to do that because I saw the little phone receiver symbol at the top of my phone screen, and pulled it down to resume the call. Because I tried going back into the phone part, and couldn't do it.

Anyhoo... she had to send me THREE confirmation numbers! For user, password, and PIN. Even though I had given her all but one symbol on my user name, and had provided five of the six correct numbers of my PIN, heh, heh. I guess being CLOSE isn't good enough. I know that's the corporate policy. I'm not mad at THIS GAL. Just tired of the hoop jumping. You might recall that when we tried to buy The Pony a phone down in Norman, Oklahoma, that Sprint locked me out of my own account and said it was attempted fraud!

Anyhoo... she SAYS we got The Pony added to the account. She kept telling me to make note of the items for future reference, and to give them to The Pony to get into the account. Duh. I'm NOT an idiot! I told her I had written them down, which seemed to throw her off. I guess I was supposed to find some magical way to store them in my phone!

Anyhoo... as you might have surmised from further up the page, The Pony is indeed arising at 3:00 a.m. to leave at 3:30 to drive Farmer H to his medical procedure. I'm pretty sure there's a Sprint store between here and there, so he can stop on the way home and get a phone.

We had a protection plan, but you know how that goes. You have to send off the phone, and The Pony cannot be without his phone, because without his own route, he's in constant communication with his manager, being sent to and fro to help with other routes. I figure he can get a phone, and then send off the broken one for fixing or replacement, and have a spare always ready. Or switch back to it if he doesn't like the new one. Anyhoo... this one is on HIS dime.

The Pony showed me his broken phone. It's not just a cracked screen, but three craters in the glass, along the edge.Sometimes the bottom half of the screen goes white. It's not going to be just a replacement of the glass.

I will be glad when this is over. The Pony will probably be glad to go back to a normal day of work.