Sue's Blog - Some assembly required.

Hello..........hello........can you hear me now?

Apparently we needed new phones.
We have had our phones for two years, during which time I still hadn't figured out how to use mine.
Philip chose it for me, saying it would be easy, well it wasn't.
Even Donna had a job to figure it out when she was over here and borrowed it.
But, the phone gods were smiling at me.  They have a sense of humour those phone gods.
Philip had only had his a couple of weeks (it wasn't a stoopy one like mine) when he put it in the golf trolley cup holder thingy when he was out batting golf balls.
It was a hot day.
What he didn't know....but soon found out, was that the previous trolley user had put chocolate in the cup holder thingy and this chocolate had melted.
Now this melted chocolate had found its way into the microphone on his phone.  Then it set.
For the last two years I have had to suppress the giggles every time he has tried to speak on his phone.  No one could hear him so he would have to shout louder and louder.
Chocolate clogs up really well.
He did make enquiries into getting the stuff removed but it would cost more than the phone is worth.
He has been eagerly awaiting this two years to be up so we could get new ones.

So, we went to Best Buy.
Philip had researched everything and knew exactly what we wanted.  I couldn't give a monkeys.  I just wanted one I could understand.
He picked them out, asked me colour I wanted, the choice was blue or white and I could see he wanted the blue one.  So I had white.
The very nice man explained all the gubbins and said if we were not happy with them we could change them for different phones within two weeks.
These are posher ones.  Well for us.
He had internet etc on his other one but I didn't.   Now I have it too. Whoopeee.

After a couple of days I was getting used to mine.  I got some sparkly covers.   In truth I am more impressed with the sparkly covers than the phone.........ooooh....shiny things.
Philip's, however, was not acting the way it should.  It lost charge even when it was charging.  It switched on and off willy nilly....and other stuff.
I was so glad it wasn't mine as he would have said I was doing it all wrong.   Mine was working perfectly.
So, Friday back to the shop.
The guy who sold us the phones said there was no problem.  Bring it in, with the receipt and box and they would change it.

On Saturday we went back armed with phone, receipt and box.......things were not as simple as they seemed.
We found our very nice man, who didn't look quite so thrilled to see us.   They would just swap it for another he had said the night before.

He gave us to another man.........who said, on being told the problems with this phone, and I kid you not...he said,  "Phones have to grow with you.".
"Ermm....no they don't." said I.
I then explained that my phone was bought at the same time and it worked perfectly.  I also said if we had wanted to grow a phone we would have bought a liddle widdle packet of phone seeds, we would have planted the seeds, watered the seeds and grown the seed."
Plus,  we have not been doing a lot of growing over the last few years and had no intention of starting again any time soon.

Then......oh dear....his friend said, (I am still not kidding), ...he said to me, " You should think yourself the lucky one because your phone actually works."
Then 3 of them started testing the phone.  "Why are you doing this?  We were told you would just swap it for another?"

Oh this got even better.
"Did you buy the Geek Squad insurance?  No? Oh well you see, that means we can't change the battery for a new one.  If you had bought the insurance we could."
"NO we were told it would be swapped for another phone.  Not the battery ....THE PHONE!"
"Oh yes but how long have you had it?"
"We keep telling you ....6 days.  There are two weeks in which you can switch the phone if for any reason we don't like it or it doesn't work properly.  Do you want us to wait for it to "grow with us"?  Maybe you want us to allow it to grow for a couple of weeks by which time we would not be able to change it."
"Oh ok we can get it switched but you should have seen Drew."
"We saw Drew first and he brought us over to you."
"I will find someone. Would you like to play some games while you wait?"
"NO."

He then disappeared for an age.  He reappeared with an older guy who took us to the front of the queue for customer service.
We explained to the girl on the counter what the problem was. "Oh you are at the wrong place. You should be over there at that counter."
Which was where we had started from.  The very first place we had gone when we came in.
The sound of a small Sue exploding into Scary Psycho Sue reverberated through the store.
This brought the older guy racing back at a rate of knots not usually observed on a Saturday afternoon in Best Buy.
He apologised most profusely and took us back to Drew.

Drew obviously didn't want to be bothered with us as he only gets commission on sales ...not problems.   A young man changed Philip's phone.
The guy who told us that phones grow obviously felt bad about what he had tried to fob us off with and hung around chatting and trying to become good chums.
He actually was quite a nice guy and I suppose they are trained to pull the wool over the customers eyes if they can.
It was quite an adventure, but one I do not wish to repeat.   Philip's phone is working properly.  Unless, of course, he doesn't want to tell me it isn't.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Bubba is still guarding his nana.
Even those with foots as big as her head can't get it.

posted by Sue Banks @ 1:34 PM