I took my new brick into the Sprint store nearest me pretty much right when they opened, but still ended up getting in there behind some lady that didn't really know what she wanted and for some inexplicable reason, the only person on duty today was the manager - perhaps he thought Monday was going to be slow for some reason. Anyway, once the clueless girl in front of me wandered off to make some other calls or something about the new plan she wanted for her mother, I stepped up to the podium.
Once I told the guy what happened, he just immediately started the process of ordering me a new one. This is not an uncommon problem and apparently the Sprint techs don't know how to fix it so they just replace the phone (I wonder when Palm is going to get around to figuring out what the problem is and releasing a firmware update for it?). Luckily (more on this later) I was able to get a replacement phone this morning and as of right now, it seems that I'm back up and on the grid once again. And, surprisingly, neither the world nor my social life had completely disintegrated during my foray into the dark - well, surprising to me at any rate; I'm sure you all knew all along that nothing would happen. Smarty pants. I was just able to take the new phone to the office and synch it up with my laptop and I'm back in black. An interesting side note is that the manager at Sprint said, "I can give you a new phone, but I won't be able to get any of your contacts off of the old one." When I told him that I'd just synch it up with my PC and not to worry about it, he says, "Really? You actually use the synch software? You'd be surprised at how many people don't use it and then just lose everything when their phone breaks. They give you the software and stuff for free, but very few people use it." I find this pretty interesting because I thought that was the whole reason to get a palm-based smartphone in the first place...
Note for Sprint Customers Regarding Phone Replacement: Here's a little gem that I discovered this morning - Sprint stores will no longer just replace your bricked phone with one from the in-store inventory unless they have to. Their current policy now is to order a new one from the warehouse and have it shipped to the store because that doesn't cut into their inventory and prevent new sales of your model of phone. This may depend on the popularity of the type of phone, but just be forewarned - you may not walk out of the store with a replacement phone and might have to go dark for a few days until your new handset arrives. Here's where that "luckily" bit came in for me today: there weren't any Centros available to order for replacement today, so the default is to then replace the phone out of inventory. So, I actually did walk out with a replacement phone and a small hiccup in my service continuity. Had they actually had one available for replacement, I wouldn't have gotten it until Wednesday at the earliest, which put me into total overdrive from a communications paranoia point of view. But...that crisis has been averted and all is back to what passes for normal around here.
I wonder what call or text message God decided I didn't need to get last night?
