Why we do not buy phones at Radio Shack!

So I have no phone until tomorrow afternoon.  On Tuesday, I went to pub to play some music as I usually do. For some reason though, I didn't put my phone in my purse before I put my phone in my flute bag. So it ended up floating around inside my big flute bag.  When I got home, I discovered that my screen was completely shattered.  I know how too. at some point, I set my chair on the corner of my bag by accident as I was sitting down. (normally my flute bag is tucked under my chair when I play so I can reach for different flutes.) Apparently my phone floating around inside my bag with all the yarn and flutes managed to get down into that corner right at the time I adjusted my chair. UGH... Well, It still worked fine, just the glass of the screen was shattered (to powder at the top and spider-webbed all the way down) under the touch screen, so I considered waiting to upgrade.  I just got a new Nexus 7, and have been using it more for my online stuff and really only needed the phone to be a phone.

Well, anyway, marynachaotica has been having some trouble with her phone. I knew I had an upgrade on the line I gave my mom for her little cheapy $10 GoPhone I gave her to keep in the car.   But when I went online to see what they might have available I discovered that her line could also be upgraded.  So marynachaotica wanted to get an upgrade.  After supper yesterday, we went into Radio Shack to see if they had any deals on Android phones that were better than AT&T had online.  She had an Atrix and I had an Atrix 2.  We both like these phones pretty well, but hers is getting pretty slow and out of date.  Radio Shack had the Atrix HD for $0 which was an amazing deal. That changed my mind about upgrading later, but he only had one in the store. The guy said he would transfer another in and we agreed to come back today to get both phones upgraded.

Well, our trip to Radio Shack was a nightmare. The guy helping us was nice enough, but geeze, he's not the brightest star in the sky.  It turned out to be a complete nightmare.  We  got there about a quarter to four in the afternoon.  So, marynachaotica's phone upgraded pretty easily, but mine wanted to be picky because it was a cross upgrade (that means I'm spending an upgrade on one line to put a new phone on mine).

Problem One: Radio Shack apparently no longer calls directly in to AT&T for assistance. First they call some stupid intermediary and they do not have access to the tools stuff that AT&T has. Simple stuff like putting in a new sim number on the correct number on a cross upgrade.  So ultimately almost an hour into the upgrade I called AT&T directly and explained the situation and had the agent speak to the RS guy to get the right sim card numbers assigned to the right phones without destroying the sim card in my mom's phone.

Problem Two: RTFM! Seriously. You get new technology, you Read the F'ing Manual before you start messing around with customer's new phones.  If you can believe this, not only did the RS guy put the marynachaotica's sim into my phone and my sim in marynachaotica's phone. He failed to look at the diagram right there on the door, and put them in sideways... got them jammed and ultimately destroyed one sim, and one phone. With my help he got one sim out undamaged, but damaged the phone, and got one sim out damaged and didn't damage the phone. He replaced the sim in the undamaged phone (marynachaotica's).

Problem Three: DO NOT TAKE 3 HOURS TO DO A COUPLE OF UPGRADES: I'm not even kidding! And do not take three hours, make your customers an hour late for dinner plans and then send them out the door with only one phone complete. That's what happened to us.  So ultimately, marynachaotica got a new phone today, but I have to wait until tomorrow so that he can go get ANOTHER phone and put the sim card in it.

Problem Four: Do not send your customer out the door without a working phone.  The least they could have done was quickly put a new sim into my old phone and activate it until they replace my new phone that they destroyed or give me a loaner.  My old phone doesn't work because the sim is already permanently deactivated. He could have put a new sim in it so I could use it until he got a new phone, but it took him so long to get things figured out, destroy a phone, switch and replace a sim, and establish that he'd destroyed my new phone (after I'd told him for an hour that he'd damaged the internal sim contacts), that I didn't have time to wait around another half an hour or more to have him replace the sim and reactivate my old phone.  Ugh. 

This is why I always told people not to go to Radio Shack for new phones. But the AT&T store just doesn't have the deals that we get at Radio Shack.  So tomorrow he is supposed to get the new phone, set it up, and transfer my data from the old phone to the new phone before I go to pick it up tomorrow afternoon.  I had better have a working phone by the time I leave there tomorrow, and really in all honesty, I had better be able to walk in, sign the contract and walk back out with my new phone, my old phone and a big smile on my face.  He does not NOT want me to leave there with my angry face on!

UGH!