Yesterday I boxed up my precious Samsun Galaxy S phone and sent it to Samsung.
A moment of silence for that please.
It was a heart wrenching moment for us both.
I don’t know when we went from having phones in the walls, to feeling anxious if I can’t text the babysitter as I’m returning from the Courthouse to make sure she picked up my kid from school.
Mine’s been doing funky stuff for awhile. I’ve just been living with it. It is old. I have the original Galaxy S and I think they are now on permeation III. But it worked. Or it did right up until it started doing weird stuff. Like the alarm stopped working. It wouldn’t let me down-load any apps and wouldn’t update any apps that I did have. It rang only when it decided it wanted to. It didn’t regularly notify me of text messages. It would lose text messages.
I talked to AT&T about it. They said, “you have a really old SIM card. Why don’t you come in and get a new SIM card.” So I did. But I couldn’t tell that made any kind of difference.
I called AT&T again. Not soon after I got the SIM card because calling AT&T is an all afternoon affair, what with the being transferred from one person to another who couldn’t help me. Finally, someone at AT&T had the grand idea to transfer me to someone at Samsung.
They weren’t much more helpful. They said, “you need to down-load the Kies software to your computer and update the software on your phone.” But because it is a time consuming process, they don’t want to wait on the telephone while I do those things. And I had to stop in the middle and make dinner or some other bothersome every day occurrence that was more important than making my phone work. So it took me awhile to get that done. None of the drivers would install.
So several weeks later when I had some time, I called Samsung again. Having gotten their direct number when I talked to them the first time. They told me that what I needed to do was completely uninstall the Kies software and download the Kies-Mini Software. But again they didn’t want to wait on the telephone while I did it and with one thing or another it took a few days to get that done.
The Kies-Mini didn’t work either.
So I called Samsung again. Now every time I talked to Samsung they gave me the same song and dance about how if I sent the phone to them it would be two-to-three weeks for them to work on my phone and get it back to me. They almost made it sound like a threat. And I said, “I can’t do that! I use it for work. I need to be in contact.” And I could almost hear them smiling while they said, ”well take it to the AT&T store and see if they have the equipment to Flash it.” Sort of “haha, sucker, you are not gonna be our problem!”
So I went back to the AT&T store where they said, very nicely I might add, “I don’t know why Samsung told you that, we don’t have the ability to Flash your phone. It takes a special piece of equipment we don’t have. But we’d be glad to sell you a new Galaxy S III for $199 and a two year extension on your contract with us.”
But you see (besides not wanting to spend $199 on a new telephone right now) I plan to break up with AT&T. I tell them this every time we talk. I have a pre-teen boy. Soon he is going to turn into a real teenaged boy who (as opposed to the one who rolls his eyes into the back of his skull at me for breathing too loud and one minute wants me to stay with him while he goes to sleep and the next minute is telling me to stop treating him like a baby for telling him not to open the car door before I get the car stopped in the carpool line) is going to want an unlimited data plan.
AT&T doesn’t offer any unlimited data plans. So when everyone on our plan is out of contract we are breaking up. I’ve got another 11 months to go before everyone is out of contract and we can move to one of the other companies that offer unlimited data plans for about what we pay now for our limited data plans.
AT&T doesn’t seem to care. They tout the ”shared data” plans they have now. But they charge by the device and it was going to cost us more than what we are paying now and we’d all have to share the data.
So I called Samsung back and told them I was sending the phone back to them. They were defeated but very efficient about it; sent me instructions and RMA numbers, and a UPS shipping label and instructions on packing my phone. So I boxed it up. Kissed it good-by and returned it to Samsung.
Now I’m carrying this piece of junk Pantech my son was using. I’ve cancelled my smart-phone internet access and instead turned on the $10 a month internet acces this one has.
And I’m counting down the days until my precious Samsung is returned to me.