Phonally, A New Fine

I've had my old cell phone for a few years now. Since the end of 2003. Before that, I had a Cingular phone, and then I went on this cross-country trip. Upon my return, I discovered that my bill was...let's just say, a bit larger than expected. And in trying to work out the details of what went wrong with the good people at Cingular, I found the company's Customer Service Department less than helpful. Okay, that's a bit of an understatement. It was the worst experience I've ever had in dealing with a company.

The worst. The Cingular Customer Service Department puts to shame all other Customer Service Departments in terms of time spent on hold, surliness and lack of English-language fluency among operators. It would have been easier to get a clear, fair deal out of a bunch of Enron traders. The guys from Glengarry Glen Ross have more scruples and pride in their work.

Anyway, I left Cingular and signed up with AT&T Wireless, a fine company with whom I had no problems until they were bought out by...wait for it...Cingular!

Neato!

So when my phone's charger broke last week (the part leading into my phone's outlet snapped off, exposing the wires and preventing me from powering up my phone), I decided to just junk it and my Cingular service, and sign up with Verizon.

So I did, 10 days ago. I just got my new phone today. There were several problems.

The first issue was what they call a PORT. It's when they take your phone number and service from one company and just electronically transfer everything to the new company, only interrupting service for a day or two and allowing you to keep your phone number. For some reason, my PORT didn't take. Cingular, it seems, shut down my service before Verizon could get too deep into their steez, and the transfer didn't go through.

The solution to this problem was fairly straightforward. I had to (this is true!) wait on hold for a Verizon representative, and then while on hold while the Verizon representative waited on hold for a Cingular representative. Then, once both of these mysterious and elusive representatives could be reached - a process requiring roughly the same amount of time as the invention and development of the cellular phone itself - I had to wait on hold while they actually initiated the PORT. It was a really long phone call...probably more time than I've spent on the phone with a woman in several years.

Foolishly, I thought that Hades' Conference Call would be enough to satisfy my new Telecommunications Masters. What a sap! Of course, Verizon was all sold out of the phone I had ordered online. Fortunately, I would get a minor upgrade - the slightly more expensive option for the same price. Unfortunately, the new phone would be sent out a few days later, and it would be sent 60 miles away, to my parents' house in Orange County.

All this has equaled about 10 days without a phone. And I mean completely without a phone, because we don't even have a land line in our apartment any more. (We did, but the guy who used to pay the phone bill moved to North Carolina without paying it, or letting us know where the bills are, or how much it costs, or why we never get any new bills...So, as we all have cell phones, we just let it go...)

In some ways, the experience has been liberating. I'm so used to being in reach to everyone in my life at all times, the notion that I could go out, not tell anyone where I was, and be totally incommunicado felt pretty good. Not that I'd want to keep this as a permanent situation. It's a real pain in the ass to not have a phone around ever. What if you want to order a pizza?

The #1 worst thing about not having a phone this week was that I missed Werner Herzog signing DVD's and books at the Barnes & Noble at the Grove. My friend Ray was randomly there, and called me to come meet him, but of course I didn't have a phone, thank you very much Verizon. He got a copy of Fitzcarraldo signed, and I sat around here like a lump reading anti-Alito blog rants. Isn't that always the way...

Today, at long last, my phone arrived. Well, technically, it arrived yesterday, but at my parent's house. This morning, I drove to Koreatown before work to pick it up from my father at his office.

And I now have a phone! And it actually works! And, better yet, it has a camera inside, so I can take photos for the blog!

Or so I imagined. It does, in fact, take photos, and I can in fact e-mail them to myself for posting on the blog. But they are pretty small and dark and pixelly. It's no substitute for having a real camera. For example, I tried to take a photo of myself, just to give you all a frame of reference about who exactly have been hurling thoughts at you for the past year.

What came out is the single scariest-looking picture of me that could ever even theoretically be taken. I never photograph well, but this picture just makes me look creepy as hell. It's very terrorist-esque. I'm not sure I feel comfortable sharing a room with the dude in this picture.



Above my head, you can see that the smoke detector has fallen out of the wall and is dangling in place. Please know that it is still plugged in, so I won't die of smoke inhalation. Just shame.

Shame, because of this final story I'm about to tell you...See, at some point today, I was fiddling around with my new phone and a customer came up to the counter at the store. So I put the phone on "lock" mode (so I wouldn't accidentally hit a button and take a picture of my groin through my pocket) and rang the needy obsessive mouth-breather up, and then returned to my new toy.

Bear in mind, I had charged the phone just moments before. I had not entered any sort of information in there yet. I tried to "unlock" the controls but nothing happened. The phone was demanding some sort of "unlock" password. But I had none. I'd owned the thing less than 5 minutes, and already I had managed to render it unusable. I left Ari in the store and ran out to my car...Surely in the instructions, they would tell you how to figure out the phone's default password.

Nothing. Here's the book's only mention of lock mode:

To unlock the phone, press SEND or "-" [UNLOCK], then input your password, then press okay.

Um...what if you haven't yet set a password? Should you just guess? Is it "bacon"?

And this is a massive instruction manual that comes with the phone. Hundreds of pages. It's not like they couldn't have found a place for it somewhere in this massive instructional tome. It's like Lord of the Ringtones or something, an epic masterwork of cellular technological explication.

Attempting to put myself in the position of a cellular phone designer, I tried to devise what would make the best default password. It should be fairly obvious, so someone could theoretically figure it out in this very circumstance, but not too obvious, in case someone never bothered to change it before it was stolen or something...

I tried 0-0-0-0, 1-1-1-1, 1-2-3-4, 6-7-8-9, even 1-3-5-7. I tried 0-1-0-6, in case it went by the date the phone was purchased. I tried the password from my voicemail on my own phone. I even tried a few random numbers, figuring it wouldn't hurt. Nothing.

I was about to give up, call back Verizon Customer Service and wait on hold for a few geologic ages. But then, I had a brainstorm. Of course! The last four digits of my phone number! It worked like a charm.

So, I am phoned. Feel free to call me if you have my number. And if you don't have my number, feel just a bit badly about yourself for the rest of the day...