The phone shopping experience

philoshop · March 28, 2019

I'll preface this with the fact that it's my 60th birthday today and my 80 yo parents insisted that I spend the day with them phone shopping because the battery in my old phone craps out and they can't call me. We also had lunch, btw. I love them and need to be reachable for them, but today was like helicopter parenting over a 60 yo son. I'm the only one who is not married, so I'm like their mission and their target.

Anyway. Off we go to Walmart to buy a phone. No one in the phone section knows anything about phones and the person who knows about phones won't be in for another half hour. So we go right to the AT&T store just down the road where the guy in skinny jeans and comfortable shoes is completely tied up with another customer. He takes a break from her and tells me to go to Walmart because he doesn't have any "cheap" phones in stock. Back to Walmart. The phone person is there by now and has more metal in her face than I've accidentally shot into my entire body through 40 years of construction work with pneumatic nailguns. After a half hour wait she gets to me and I buy a phone. She then sends me back to the AT&T store to have it activated and have my contact list transferred. The guy at the AT&T store is still with the woman he was with earlier and we wait another half hour. He eventually transfers my contact list to the new phone and gives me a thumbs up.

I get home and the phone doesn't work. I'm trying to call my sister to let her know that I won $28 on the scratch-offs she put in my birthday card but I'm getting the AT&T call center. I wait for several minutes and then I'm talking to someone from India. I have friends from India, so it's not a big deal deciphering the rather interesting English. I explain the situation and the gentleman takes some info and puts me on hold. He comes back on the line and says I'm good to go. The phone is now working. Why that whole thing couldn't have been done in 15 minutes at one of the two points of sale is simply beyond me. A guy in India had to fix the mistake. Neither one of the local people bothered to activate the phone. I thought that was part of their job.

Rant over.