A Story

 

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away . . . . .

 I’ve had an iPhone 8 for many years now and 9 or so months ago, it started to act up.  A problem that required that I shut the phone completely off, wait 30 seconds and turn it back on so things would work.  Ugh.  This was a royal pain in the patootie.

My phone carrier, AT&T, had been offering me the option of an upgrade for some time.  I had gotten the iPhone 8 from ATT, so I decided to take advantage of the offer(s).  Fine.  Took the most recent notice from ATT, went to the webpage and chose a phone, ticked whatever boxes and poof!

all was done.  The phone arrived two days later just like magic.

Next step – transfer data from old phone to new phone.  Okay.  It’s pretty easy.  The phones “talked” to one another and abracadabra, it was done.  New phone with all the right stuff!  Cool!

Then, over the next couple days, I noticed the new phone got hot – as in uncomfortably very warm hot – anytime I used it for more than a few minutes.  Hmmmmm – this can’t be good.

Now, brief comment:  I am your basic little old lady.  I don’t play humongous intricate games with many people on the phone; I don’t down load movies or tv shows on the phone.  I do play solitaire or spider or a few other card-type games in the evening.  And, yes, I do play for 30 minutes or so at a time.  Still, the old phone didn’t get hot, hmmmmm …..

So I called the ATT service tech and explained the situation/problem. 

No problem, sez he, we’ll just send you a new phone and you can return the one that gets hot. 

Good.  Of course it took being transferred, and retelling the history and answering a bazillion questions, but eventually it all got done.  I’m thinking I only spent an hour dealing with the whole situation, okay,   maybe two hours, but seemed all was going smoothly.  Happy customer.

The new phone would ship the same day and, taaa-daaa, it arrived Thursday (yes, yesterday).

Now, since I already did the transfer of information previously, I had a pretty good understanding how to do it again.  Plus, the phone(s) prompt you as the process goes along.  I started the transfer of data hot phone to newer phone.  All went well ….. and then…..

ERROR MESSAGE – CAN’T DOWNLOAD DATA.  Stop.

I repeated the process four (4) (as in 1, 2, 3, 4) times.  Tried to do a manual transfer twice.  Same thing happened. 

And so, I called ATT’s tech services again.  

After a brief argument with the talking computer, I finally spoke with ‘John’.  Explained what all had been going on and the current problem – can’t transfer data one phone to the other.

No problemo, sez John, I’m the best service tech there is.  We’ll just use the mobile transfer app and that will do it all for you.

And so he walked me through doing this, that, and the other thing.  Wahoo, the phones started the data transfer.  Okay, it’ll take a few minutes so I’ll hang up now.  Goodbye.

The phone(s) finished doing whatever.  I checked the new phone.  Hmmmmm – none of my apps transferred, none of my emails, none of my texts.  In fact, the only things that transferred were my contact list and my photos. 

I called the ATT tech services back.

This time I spoke with ‘Matt’.  Well, sez he, are both your phones completely updated? 

Well, the “hot” phone was but the brand new just out of the box phone was not.  He told me to start the update and that he’d call me back in 15 minutes to see if we could transfer the data.  Do you promise to call back, was my only comment,

because my stress and frustration levels are so high right now . .   I just might reach through the phone and . . .

Oh yes, oh yes, absolutely I’ll call.  Fine.  Update finished.  I waited 15 minutes . . . 1 hour . . . 2 hours.  No call back.

Now I have two new phones and neither work.  Goodie.

Then, I discovered that there is an ATT store in El Campo, a mere 20 miles away.  Today I went to the ATT store and the manager (an intelligent, delightful, helpful, marvelous, woman who understands customer service) fixed the problem for me.

The End.

 

The moral of the story is – always find a live human person, especially one that is sitting right across a small table from you, to help solve a problem before you are ready to commit murder and mayhem.

 

29 Apr 2022