Dead Phone

My phone started seriously flaking out on Tuesday. In the morning, I was trying to call Sarahlynn and it kept dropping the call. I didn't have a usable signal all day long. I couldn't get a data connection to keep synced with my work email/calendar. Of course, I've had lots of past problems with this phone. Time for a new one pretty soon any way. (I'm jonesing for a Palm Pre, but I don't think it will support synchronization with work out of the box).

So, Wednesday morning, I took the phone in to a Sprint store, first thing in the morning. As luck would have it, as I sat outside the Sprint store, waiting for it to open, my phone started working again! I was sure these guys inside wouldn't believe me that it wasn't working; or they'd just blame the storms yesterday for bad reception; something like that.

Luckily, they took the phone back and ran some radio tests on it, and it failed the diagnostics! Phew. I'm not crazy.... but I am out a phone. And the Palm Pre isn't out yet.

Replacement phone: $120 Ugh.

Another stroke of luck, though: Sprint is having "open enrollment" for insurance plans. Usually you can only buy phone insurance when you buy the phone or renew your contract. They happen to be allowing open enrollment right now. So, I start up my insurance contract for $7 / month.... and voila, I get a new phone on Thursday for free! Great!

The last funny part of the story.

I swing by the store on Thursday at 12:00 to see if they happen to have it in, yet. The nice woman at the desk explains that they usually get the shipment in around noon and sorted out by 3:00. OK, I go on my way, with my mostly dead phone that they're going to try to contact me via when the new phone arives.

I get to work (7 mile drive) and notice I have a voicemail. Of course. It's the Sprint store telling me my new phone is in.

Well, now I've got my replacement phone and it's working better than ever. No funky dropped calls or screwball reception or anything, yet. Let me bang it around for a while. I'm sure it'll start acting flakey soon enough.