Hellish Nightmare swapping my new iPhone 4

By CSharpner · December 10, 2011

My brand new iPhone had an ugly, brown tinge to the screen  (image to the right: Left is my Android MyTouch 3G showing screen shot e-mailed from iPhone, right is my iPhone).  So I went in to complain and they said I could swap, but they insisted it was within spec.  Being a graphic artist myself and knowing that Apple is considered the panacea of digital art, I'd have expected MUCH tighter controls on their tolerance for colors on their screens.

Anyway...
Swapping it was pretty easy... had to wait though, obviously because of Christmas crowd...

The red shirt (Apple employee) brought me out a new iPhone 4 but it wouldn’t work because it was saying it was missing the SIM card.  One problem, Verizon phones don’t use SIM cards and it shouldn’t be asking.  He had to take it to the back room to find out what’s up.  Turns out, it was configured as an AT&T phone, but it was a Verizon phone (per its hardware).  He had to do a factory reset, which took several minutes.  Finally, it booted properly.  He handed it to me and I entered my Apple ID login name and password and did the iCloud restore (which worked remarkably well!).  He and I thought we were done, so I left.

_*BTW, Kudos for Apple with iCloud backup and restore for the phones.  Keeping my settings, apps, and files was freaking fantastic!*_

I get out of the store and attempt to make a call and get a notice that it's not activated but I can make a collect call.  I hit 0 about 8 times in the menu to finally get a human.  It's an Indian call center.  I tell'em I want to activate my phone and explain I just swapped it in the Apple store and thought we were through.  He says no problem and since I called their customer courtesy number I will get a $25 gift card for Staples, but I have to pay $1.79 for shipping and handling.  Normally that sounds fishy, but hey, it's Verizon, so I figure, why not?  I will most certainly make use of it.  Takes about 20 minutes to communicate over the crowd noise and language barrier AND any time I’d interrupt him with a question, he’d start over with his spiel, beginning with “Since you’ve called the customer courtesy hotline….”!!!  AFTER I'd given him my credit card info, he tells me the "packet" will arrive in about a week and, oh, btw, I'm signed up for CREDIT MONITORING AUTO BILLED MONTHLY!  But, he wouldn’t tell me it was billed monthly when I asked.  Instead, he’d repeat the benefits and every time I interrupted he’d START OVER!  I couldn’t believe Verizon would do this!  Finally, I let him finish and he says I can “cancel” after I get it, but I can’t get just the $25 gift card.

So...
I tell him, NO WAY!  Cancel the whole thing and let's just get my phone activated...
After multiple times telling him that, he finally transfers me.
I get another Indian who begins the same deal with the gift card spiel.
I tell him I just went through that with the last guy.  I just want my phone activated.  He says I have to call another number, but yet still keeps trying to read me the script for the damned gift card!  I'm really surprised I'm going through this with Verizon and that Verizon is using an Indian call center.

Finally I get the number from him, double check it's correct by reading it back to him with confirmation.  So I call it and it's the freaking AT&T 411 info number!?!?!?!?

Bastards!  I wasn't talking to Verizon at all!  Now, it's apparent that when I tried to make a call with my yet to be activated Verizon phone, that Verizon is NOT the company that the calls get routed to!  Guaranteed I'll get that charge on my credit card in spite of telling TWO people to cancel it and getting a final confirmation from the 2nd guy, who seriously sounded like he was lying.  (Note to self... keep an eye on credit card charges and call to deny them paying it when it shows up).

So, I grab a red shirt in the store and explain my story.  I get passed around to 3 people.  Dude punches in *228, which gives me that menu all you Verizon customers are familiar with.  It says "Press 1 to..." and darn it if my wife didn't call me from the food court in the mall on my other phone asking what's taking so long.  I answer real quick and get her off the phone and ask her to NOT call me back (this was the 2nd time she called with bad timing... not her fault, but now it's going to add 20 minutes... you'll see... keep reading...).  I switch over to the *228 call and some human is now introducing himself since I missed the menus.  I tell him I just need to activate my phone.  He's very helpful AND AMERICAN! (No offense intended to the overly, politically correct, sensitive types... It just means I can understand him!)  But he can't figure what to do and needs the Verizon password, which our tech at work has (and it's a Saturday!).  I just started this job that issued me the phone and don't really know the guy all that well and hate to bother him on a Saturday AND I don't know his number, so I text my friend who works there to and get it.

The Verizon guy calls the tech guy from work and tech guy says yah, take care of him.  Verizon guy comes back and says he can take care of me.  He tries lots of stuff.  Nothing works.  I grab another red shirt, pull them into the back of the store away from the crowd noise and put Verizon guy on speaker phone so we can both talk to him.  Verizon guy calls me back on my Android and I put him on speaker there and hang up the iPhone so we can mess around with the iPhone.  We try *228 multiple times and it always goes straight to human, which is not what we need.  Finally, after flipping switches on his end for around 20 minutes, the *228 works and it gets activated.

Took about 2 freaking hours in all!

But, I'm up and running... FINALLY

And my new screen is only marginally better!

Old iPhone 4 on the left, new one on the right.

/rant off