You Will Know Them by Their Fruits

My phone was four years old and the battery no longer kept a charge for more than a couple hours. It was time to order a new phone. It came on a Saturday, and I spent a couple hours in the afternoon getting everything transferred and set up. All seemed to be going swimmingly.

But when I turned it on the following Saturday, it blinked and went dark. I tried to get it started again, but without success.

The FAQs on the Fruit web page explain how to do a forced start-up — push and release the up volume button, push and release the down volume button, then push and hold the on/off button. I tried. Did I hold the button down long enough? I tried again. Did I push and release quickly enough? I tried again. Nothing. The web page then told me to charge the phone for an hour. I plugged it in and went for a walk.

When I got back, I pushed and released the up volume button, pushed and released the down volume button, and pushed and held the on/off button. Nothing. If it can be said than an inanimate object can feel dead, my phone felt dead.

So I called Fruit service on my wife’s phone. I connected with an automatic voice that said it could understand complete sentences. I explained that my phone had crashed and I couldn’t get it started. The voice asked if it could send me a text message that told me how to push and release the up volume button, push and release the down volume button, then push and hold the on/off button. I said no, I couldn’t get text messages because I don’t have a working phone. It then said that it would connect me with a real person, but first, could they text me a survey about how my experience with service went? I said no, because I don’t have a working phone.

They then connected me with some genius in the service department. He asked how he could help me. I said, “When I turned my new phone on this morning, it crashed. I tried to do a forced restart and tried to charge it, but it’s still dead. He hung up on me. I tried again, and got hung up on again. Again. Again.

So I tried to contact somebody through chat. This put me in contact with a genius who started the conversation by telling me that he hoped I was doing well. I told him that my new phone had crashed, that I had attempted to do a forced restart and to charge it, but it was still dead.

He said, “Thank you for letting me know your concern.” Because I was doing this for him …

He then said that he would “look into this and provide you with the necessary information to sort this out for you.” He began by asking me if he could ask me questions. I said sure.

He asked if the phone turned on after I charged it. I said no.

He then told me to push and release the up volume button, push and release the down volume button, then push and hold the on/off button. Just to make him happy, I tried again. Nothing.

He thanked me for trying and said he appreciated my efforts. Then he hung up on me.

I tried again. I worked my way to the point where the voice asked if it could text me a survey. I said, “sure.”

A few minutes later, I received a survey (on the chat screen, not by text — we’re talking multiple surveys here) asking me to evaluate my experience on the chat line.

Obviously, I wasn’t going to get anywhere talking to the Fruit people. I looked for the closest authorized Fruit service and made an appointment at a Best Buy in town for early that afternoon.

I was met by two young men who took my phone and pushed and released the up volume button, pushed and released the down volume button, then pushed and held the on/off button. When that didn’t work, they tried to give it a charge. When that didn’t work, they pulled out some special charger and tried again. Nothing.

They said that I’d have to take it to the Fruit store. The closest one was in Little Rock, about 45 minutes away. I asked for directions — because I didn’t have a working phone. They gave me an address. I asked if I could see an actual map — because I didn’t have a working phone. One of them pulled the directions up on his phone, and I wrote down the route.

I drove immediately to the Fruit store. A cheerful young man met me at the door and asked how he could help me. I told him my phone had crashed. He took it and pushed and released the up volume button, pushed and released the down volume button, then pushed and held the on/off button. When that didn’t work, he tried to charge it. Nothing. He told me to find a seat and a technician would find me “by your clothes.”

I found a seat and tried to sit in a way that would make what I was wearing obvious. It must have worked because, 20 minutes later, an earnest young man walked over and said hello.

I told him all that had happened and gave him my phone. He pushed and released the up volume button, pushed and released the down volume button, then pushed and held the on/off button. When that didn’t work, he tried giving it a charge. Nothing.

He then hooked it up to a computer that ran diagnoses. According to him, it took a long time to get any information, and even then the information wasn’t complete. He suspected that not only had the phone crashed, but the port was bad. He then had me sign into my account on his computer. I didn’t remember my password, but I said I could call my wife at home and get it — except that I didn’t have a working phone. He went in the back and got one. Since the call wasn’t from a recognized number, I suspected my wife wouldn’t answer, but she did. She was surprised to hear that I was in Little Rock.

By this time, I was expecting a new phone. But no. The technician informed me that I would be given a loaner while mine was sent in for repair. He said it would take 3-5 days. I even requested a new phone and asked why I couldn’t have one. He said he had no choice in the matter. He had to do what the system told him to do.

A young woman came out of the back and handed me a pink phone. The guy explained that I could transfer my data to it from my computer and get a sim card from my cell provider — which happened to have a store on the other side of the parking lot. I had to sign an agreement that I’d pay for the loss or damage of the loaner phone.

I walked over and talked to a representative at the cell provider. He called up my account and asked me for my PIN. I didn’t know my PIN. I didn’t know I had a PIN. There wasn’t any way he could give me phone service without my PIN. I supposed I could have borrowed another phone and called my wife, but by this time I was just fed up. I figured I’d gone the first 40 years of my life without a phone in my pocket, I could make it home.

I drove home. On the way, I stopped to pick up a couple rocks from a stretch of woods. I’m collecting them for a landscape project at home. In the 20 years or so that I’ve carried a phone, I don’t recall ever having one fall out of my pocket. Of course, the loaner phone fell out of my pocket and hit one of the rocks, chipping the case a little bit.

When I got home, I asked my wife for the cell service PIN. She didn’t know it. She didn’t know there was a PIN. She looked in our files and couldn’t find anything about a PIN. I was thoroughly fed up by this time and decided to live without a phone. On my old phone, the one with the dying battery, I could still connect to Wi-Fi. (On one occasion during the week, when my wife and I needed to be in communication, I pulled into a library, got on the Wi-Fi, and chatted back and forth with her by email.)

The technician at the Fruit store said 3-5 days, so I waited four. I had been told that I’d be texted when my phone was ready, but since I don’t have cell service, I couldn’t get texts.  I decided to call the store.

I got an automated voice that asked if it could help me and wondered if it could send me a survey. I told it to knock itself out. It finally figured out that it couldn’t help me and connected me with another genius. I explained to this woman that I was trying to contact the Fruit store at the Promenade in Little Rock to find out if my phone had been repaired. She asked me for my account number, my repair number, and several other things, then told me that she couldn’t access the information, but she could connect me with the store. I endured several minutes of discordant jazz music before a guy answered the phone.

He was polite, friendly, and genuinely interested in helping me. But he couldn’t find my information anywhere. He couldn’t find it by my name, by my Fruit i.d., or by my repair number. But he assured me that he’d figure it out. He put  me on hold — this time with pop music.

When he got back on, he asked if I lived in Arkansas. I thought this was a weird question, since the store was in Little Rock. But no, the genius at Fruit service had connected me with the Fruit store at the Promenade — in Colorado Springs.

That was a bit odd. I was connected with the wrong store because it had the same name as the one in Little Rock. But it just so happens that it was two miles down the road from my old house. In fact, the I’d purchased the phone I had just replaced at that very store.

The guy said he would try to connect me to the store in Little Rock, but he apologized up front and said that he had no control over these things, and that I might have to go back through the whole process again. He put me on hold.

Sure enough, I was back at the beginning. The automated voice asked how it could help me and asked if it could send me a survey. I said please, one can’t get too many surveys. I explained that I was trying to contact the store in Little Rock. It hung up on me.

And sent me a survey.

At this point, I noticed that the small print on the repair order said that my phone would probably be ready in seven days, not the 3-5 the technician had told me. I decided to quit talking to people and just drive to the store next Saturday.

But later that day I got an email from Fruit saying that my phone had just arrived at the service center. If it takes four days to get to the service center, it’s going to be tough to get it back to me in three days.

The email said the technicians there were “looking at your phone.” I got a picture in my head of nine guys sitting around a table staring at my dead phone. Perhaps one of them tried to push and release the up volume button, push and release the down volume button, then push and hold the on/off button. Then they probably tried to charge it. I was given a link to a site where I could track the progress of my phone. For the next 24 hours, it kept saying that they were looking at my phone. Seems like a boring job.

Anyway, today the message changed. The phone is dead and they’re sending me a replacement. And probably a survey.

No word on when I’ll get it.

Update: I have a phone again. It took 7 days, not 3-5. And it’s not a new phone. It’s a refurbished phone. My warranty is still good — minus the 7 days I had my old phone and the 7 days I didn’t have any phone.

I went to the cell store and told the young man I needed service on my new phone. He asked for my PIN. When I said I didn’t know it, he said he could call my wife’s number, and she could give me access to the account. So he did, and she did, and I had service. Why the other genius — who was sitting at the next desk — didn’t think of this the week before, I don’t know. I could have had service on my old phone all week.

How can I complain about all this? If only there was a survey I could fill out …