Phone Saga Continues

A few days ago I switched from a flip phone to a smartphone. I posted the story of that. That wasn’t the end of the transition.

I tried to use the Internet on my phone while I was out of wifi range. Turns out I did not have data service. I did not request service with data when I originally got the flip phone 14 years ago. Being able to go online during an Internet outage is the main reason I got a smartphone, so I needed to change plans. It’s only $5 more to get a plan with enough data, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it with the instructions I found online. It turned out there was a recent change; the process now requires an agent. So I had to do chat again and I dreaded it. But this time it was quick and easy. Great news.

Well, the next day I found that I could not send or receive texts, nor could I make or receive phone calls. I suddenly had no service. I tried to chat online, but needed to receive a text with a code to verify my login to my phone service account. That was impossible with my dead smartphone so using our landline I called the number for account service. Not too bad. After the automated service gave me 3 things to try which failed, I was asked for my pin number for further help. I couldn’t find it in time, so the auto-agent sent me a text to respond to. Of course, I could not receive that, so it gave up and gave me a person. That person had me do a few things (that I had already tried from the tips online) and those didn’t help, just as when I’d tried them before. So I was then connected to tech support.

This person was very laid back in presentation. Soft voice, blessing me. I was thrown by this introduction and asked him if he would be helping me with the problem. I felt very much that I was in serious trouble. After a while his way of conversing soothed me and I was calm and enjoying the conversation as he worked through the problem.

The bottom line is that this was probably my fault: When I got the new phone I took out the SIM card and put in the card from my flip phone. That worked fine. When I decided to get a different plan I was asked for a number found in the phone and a number that was on the box it came in (ICCID.) That ICCID was not for the card currently in my phone so now the phone didn’t connect. I put the original SIM card back in the phone while talking with the tech on the landline speaker phone. It went smoothly and it fixed the problem. A half-hour or so later I got a call on my smartphone from the tech guy to double check all was well.

I was very happy and then plunged into the unhappy state shortly after with a cooking disaster, but that is what the compost bin is for, right?