Well Hello, Tuesday! You do know that Tuesday is the best day to be random, right? It’s the perfect day to shed the shackles of pieces of random thoughts that don’t quite fit into a post. Though today I’m doing more of a random rant, but hey – those are allowed, too.

So get this – the phone Virgin Mobile USA sent me in 2014 – where I gave a rave review of the Custom Plan at the time – this phone:

That phone died an oddball death two weeks ago Sunday night. You know, just in time to start the week off without a functioning cell phone.

Of course it was shortly after I topped off my plan money to get it to last through the rest of this month before I’m forced to upgrade to a more expensive plan, since Virgin Mobile is eliminating my current budget-friendly (read: cheap) plan on May 31st that has worked perfectly fine for me since 2014.

My phone decided, shortly after I added money to the account, to enter a boot loop – it refused to boot past the Virgin Mobile logo. I did a hard factory reset, and suddenly my phone entered into a time warp and decided the current date is January 1, 1970.

Because of security, the time warp date wouldn’t allow access to our wifi in order to download system updates to bring it back to the present. No amount of resetting made it return to the present time, so I called Virgin Mobile first thing Monday morning to find out what to do.

The tech I spoke with was very condescending, had me do a factory reset several times (and seemed amused I was predicting exactly what would happen with each step, considering I’d done it 10 times the night before), then told me the only way to ‘fix’ the phone was to upgrade my account now vs. at the end of the month.

I told him I wasn’t prepared to do that yet, otherwise I wouldn’t have topped off my account the day before.

I wanted to wait as long as possible before I was forced to do something I didn’t want to do to begin with. He agreed that my phone was now a brick, and I needed to order a new one. He assured me the phone number I had would transfer, as well as the money sitting on that account.

The next morning I noticed an email from Virgin Mobile with the subject line “Sorry to see you go!” and “Your account has been terminated” in the body. Whaaaaaat?

I never canceled my account, my phone decided to give up the ghost – through no fault of mine, I might add, as there was not enough memory on that phone to download anything I might have wanted to download – no fun games, no fun apps – I just used it as a phone – imagine that!

I called and spoke with another (this time a very nice) customer service rep, who assured me that my phone number would still be able to be transferred to the new phone I just ordered, and that the money on my account would transfer over to the new plan. No worries, right?

Except.  Once I had a new phone in hand to do the deed with, they couldn’t seem to find my account. At all.

I was transferred to three different people, and after about 90 minutes of transfers and terminal ignore (aka terminal ‘hold’ with the worst hold music in the history of hold music).

I was FINALLY transferred to a rep who actually was able to locate my account, activated my new phone, transferred the monies sitting in my account to the upgraded account, and I got to keep the same phone number I’ve had forever (which is listed on all ‘Emergency Contact’ docs for school and whatnot).

I have to say, though, that as soon as I find an alternate service that works for my needs (I don’t need a Data Plan, which is what they’re ‘forcing’ everyone to get whether they want it or not, because then they can justify the higher price) I’ll be ditching them in a heartbeat. In case you’re wondering, I don’t take kindly to be told I HAVE to do something, rather than being given other options and getting to CHOOSE what I want.

It’s time once again for Leslie’s (aka Rory Bore) Tuesday Coffee Chat!

The question or prompt for this week is:

Tuesday, May 9th, 2017

“What song reflects your mood right now?

Ooooh, I like that question! I’m going to let the song do all the talking/answering for me, a song by an American DJ duo collaborating with a British band, the second single off the DJ’s debut album. It’s quite a catchy tune!

TheChainsmokersColdplayHere are The Chainsmokers and with “Something Just Like This”:

That’s a wrap for this week – you know the drill, link up and join in the fun, everyone is welcome, random or not. And that means even if you don’t have a specific Random Tuesday Thoughts Rebel post posted, you can still link up, I’m not picky. You don’t even have to add the badge, just link up so I can come harass you on your blog. I promise to play nice.

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Link up your Random (or not) here:

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Keeping the random alive (barely) – feel free to snag a badge and play along – one for my wino friends:

Stacy Uncorked

And one for my non-wino friends:

Stacy Uncorked

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8 Comments

  1. Cool song! I know exactly how you feel when your phone decides to do weird things. And I hate calling the phone company and hate worse having to go in there. They’re kinda like car salesman. Make you wait and wait. Transferred to several people. Some are incompetence. Some you just can’t understand. Frustrating!

  2. Having to deal with “customer service” is one of the most painful things! There are a couple of smaller companies out there, Jitterbug comes to mind, that offer simple calling/texting plans that are of a reasonable price, and they are supposed to allow you to keep your phone number when you transfer to them. Good luck!

  3. I’m not a fan either lately. When you use your phone ensure that you can still if you do, send pics via text. This “new” system uses Data and is a royal Pain in the ASS! So angry making.

  4. I really feel for you. I had both of my computers update Windows 10 on May 11th. They just said they were going to do it…and they did…they messed everything up. Nothing worked right after that. In fact, the laptop said there were still updates pending…oh, no, there aren’t…oh, yes, there are…so. We got some tech geeks to sort it all out and get me back on track. Good grief. I was just fine before…and thankfully, again.

    I miss Coffee Chat, and Les. Sadly, there is a glitch there, too. I cannot comment over there. The comment box freaks out my security or something. Hugs!

  5. Oh bother – remember the good old days when companies existed to HELP the consumer?? Or was there ever really a time it wasn’t just about making money??!! hhhhmmm.
    I get so frustrated by these plans that lock you in, and then a new phone is released and suddenly you’re out of date for the next two years — when surely another phone will be released during that time frame, but they won’t upgrade you to the newest – oh no! – you get the next level up, even if it is two years old already. Ugh!!!!

    Thank goodness you choose a great song because I feel much better already. 🙂

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