Saturday, November 23, 2013

No Wings for Angel

This being the season for "It's a Wonderful Life,", I was thinking about Angel getting his wings as I left the Verizon store.  I've been having a terrible time with my cell phone.  It is getting slower and slower and slower, and had reached a point where it was pretty much useless.

NedNeck.jpg (11459 bytes)Ned had his surgery yesterday and I was waiting for a text from Marta, which did come, but my cell phone first would not unlock at all and when it did, it wouldn't connect to the text messages.  Fortunately, she sent the same message to Walt, too, so I was able to find out that he's OK, though he looks like he's been attacked by a vampire.

Anyway, that was the straw that broke the camel's back and I decided to go to Verizon.  I thought that we were not due for new phones until January and had been limping along with this one, but it was getting ridiculous.

That's where I met Angel.  He says his mother saddled him with that unlucky name and he has been hearing about it his whole life.

Fortunately, the phone misbehaved for him just like it did for me, so he could see that I was having serious problems.  He checked our account and told me that actually we had been qualified for an upgrade since August (apparently the contract updates every 2 years, but you can upgrade your phone every 20 months...nice thing to remember for next time).

I told him I wanted an iPhone 4 because I was tired of not having all the goodies all the other kids did because they didn't make them for my Android and I wanted the 4 instead of the celebrated iPhone 5 because I'd heard of so many problems with the 5.

Turns out that because they are concentrating on selling the 5, Apple doesn't really sell the 4, unless it's a reconditioned one (guaranted, of course).  I didn't care new or reconditioned.  My history with reconditioned stuff has been good so far. So we went through all the paperwork and the thing cost only the transfer fee and the cost of a new cover, which brought it to $60.  Such a deal.

I did some shopping while he was transferring contact information over to the new phone and it was finished by the time I came back.  He told me that the phone would suggest that I upgrade to the new operating system but I should NOT do it because the 4 couldn't handle the power of the upgraded system.  I remembered when Char had upgraded and it screwed her up for a long time, so I have been avoiding updates like the plague.

I happily came home with my new phone and started transferring information over.   I have several lengthy notes that I needed to have on the phone (like the notes I take when my mother sees the doctor and that kind of stuff).  I got several of them transferred (read -- retyped into the new phone) and then I decided to download one of the many apps I needed to download, now for the iPhone and not the Android, only when I tried, I kept getting a message that it could not connect to the iTunes Store.

I tried everything and eventually I called Verizon, only instead of getting Angel, I got the downtown store and the guy there had a completely different story.  He groaned and said that Angel's store had "issues."  He tried to walk me through how to connect to the iTunes store, but he finally gave up and gave me a number to call (800-myiphone)

I called that and first had a lengthy exchange with a robot who eventually connected me with a customer service representative, who said he could help me, only did exactly the same thing the Verizon guy here did, which had exactly the same result.   He finally passed me along to a tech guy.

The tech guy, after telling me my phone was not registered (and did something, I don't know what, when I told him I had just bought it two hours ago) told me that the problem was I had the wrong operating system and I would have to update.  I protested and talked about my fears for both the desktop and the phone and even played the age card and told him that I was 70 yrs old and hated new things (!) but he finally told me that my only option was up upgrade both my deskto and the phone, or resign myself to not using apps.  

Cruel guy.

So, with fear and trembling, I started the upgrade to my desktop.  It was taking so long, we made an appointment for him to call back in half an hour, when the upgrade was finished.

He didn't call back, but another guy did and he finally fixed the problem.  I told him about upgrading and he said "Well, that might not be your problem.  The iTunes Store has been down all afternoon--we've been getting lots of calls about it."  After all this it wasn't my phone's problem at alll, but iTunes. We went off to a show, came home and...voila!  I can now download apps from the iTunes store.

No wings for Angel.  No wings for any of the other guys.  Wings for the guy who finally "solved" the problem!

(But now I have an updated iTunes..., but alas no Siri on my phone, since Siri came along with the 4s.  But I probably wouldn't talk to her much anyway, so that's OK)

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