Spencer vs. Cell Phones

It’s 15 degrees and I’m standing on my front porch in my underwear.  Oh, and I’m not happy about it.  To get cell phone reception in my house, I have to leave my house.  That’s why when my two-year Verizon contract ends in April I’m switching to a different provider. 

It wouldn’t be a big deal to suffer the crap reception if my cell phone hadn’t stopped working a month ago.  The speaker gave out.  I can still make calls and talk all I want, but I can’t hear anything the other person is saying.  I can’t even hear the phone ring, so when I call home I just start talking. Now all of my conversations go like this “My cell doesn’t work, you can hear me, but I can’t hear you.  I’ll just keep talking.  I’m on 53^rd South, I’ll be home in 10 minutes.  I’m on 53^rd South, I’ll be home in 10 minutes.  I’m on 53^rd South, I’ll be home in 10 minutes.”  Then I hang up, not knowing if I have talked to anyone at all or if I have left a really weird message on an answering machine. 

The real fun, though, started when I tried to get a new phone.  Cell phone companies will give you a free cell phone any time you’re willing to sign a new contract.  If you’re not willing to sign the contract, a new phone will basically cost you a million dollars.  I don’t want to pay for a new phone if I am just going to get a free phone when I switch plans in a few months.   

Verizon stays in business by selling you a two year contract and giving you a free phone that has a one year warranty.  On day 366 the phone will inevitably break and you’ll have to either pay the million dollars (about $200 and up) or change your plan and sign up for another two years.  Since I am not a millionaire, I had to concoct a scheme to beat the cell phone company. 

After looking around and finding that you can’t get a cheap phone without signing up for a plan, I had to turn to my friend eBay.  I typed “cell phone” in the search bar and got 50 billion results.  I passed up the RAZR for a humble, used Kyocera.  I could get the phone (with shipping included) for 10 bucks.  Seemed like that would get me through ‘til the end of my contract.   

After winning the auction and then fighting with the seller about whether or not she really accepted PayPal. (Though she said she did, she really didn’t and I paid an extra $2 to use stupid BidPay.)    

The phone showed up a few days later and I thought my problems were solved.  I opened up the package and tried to turn on the phone, but it wouldn’t turn on.  The stupid-revelation lightbulb slowly illuminated above my head.  I didn’t buy a charger for the thing. Back to eBay to find a stupid charger.   

Another week later and the charger arrived in the mail.  The next day the new(old) phone was charged and ready.  Now all I needed to do was activate the phone and my cell phone woes would be over.  I went to Verizon’s website to activate it, but it kept telling me that the info that I had entered was invalid.  Now I was worrying that I had bought some stolen phone that had been blacklisted.  I called Verizon’s customer service to have them activate the phone.  I knew I was out of luck when the guy said, “Under no circumstances can I activate that phone.”  Great.  It was a stolen phone.  I could hear the feds knocking on my front door.   

I found out it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but just as much of a pain in my butt.  The FCC recently passed a new regulation that all new cell phones must be E911 compatible.  That means that all phones need to have a GPS system, so when you call 911, they can track you down.  Since the new (old) phone from eBay was not compatible, Verizon wouldn’t activate it for me - information that would have been nice before I bought the phone and the charger. 

At this point I started checking with family members to see if anyone had a cell phone they weren’t using anymore (which is what I should have done from the beginning).  Between my family and Traci’s family, I think there were about a dozen old cell phones lying around.  Just my luck, none of them were compatible.  It all ends where it began - me with a broken cell phone and a new (old) phone and charger that don’t work either.  Yes, I love technology.