I Suck At Cell Phones

since my son (braden) passed away, things have seemed to break or needed repair for both karen and i. adding to the snowballing list of expenses now... our cell phones.

both karen and i have had the same cell phone for quite some time... at least 4 years. karen had a cell phone prior to then. she actually upgraded to a new phone when i got mine over four years ago. at the time, i actually did not even want a cell phone because i knew i would hardly use it. to this day, i still hardly use my cell phone. nonetheless, i suppose the cell phone is good to have in case of emergencies or whatnot. (i almost sound like an old fogey for saying stuff like that.)

anyway, lately our cell phones have been losing its battery life very quickly. we would charge the battery and then the phone would "die" a couple of days afterwards. anyone who knows me, knows that i only recharge batteries when the entire battery has been drained. i don't charge batteries otherwise. so with the recent battery problem, karen and i decided to get new cell phones. too bad i suck at cell phones.

karen and i ended up going to the at&t store located on the hingham/norwell line. we had gotten there just as the store was closing. the sales associate (joseph), however, was kind enough to stay later to help us out. (it turns out, the sales associate gets commission for sales... so it's not like he helped us out of the kindness of his heart. there were ulterior motives for his wanting to help us after hours.)

we told the sales associate what we wanted... which wasn't much because all karen and i really do is use the phone to call people. we don't generally text. we don't use the camera. we don't use a lot of the features that come on most cell phones now. so the sales associate went to the back and brought out a bunch of phones for us to look at. karen and i decided on a phone (a nokia 6650).

as we went to pay for the phones, the sales associate told us that the phones come with a car charger. naturally, we thought... great! only problem... when we looked at the receipt, we saw that the car chargers were charged to the credit card.

of course, we questioned this fact with the sales associate. in what seemed like a convoluted story, he told us that the price of the phone was discounted from its original price so as to make the receipt appear like the car chargers were charged.

when it smells like feces, it probably is. anyway, karen and i have since gone to the at&t website to view the price of the phone. sure enough, the price of the phone is the same price that we were charged for. so, it appears like either a) the price of the phone is incorrect or b) the car charger was incorrectly charged. either way, the entire thing seems shady.

to be honest, with the passing of our son (braden), i don't think karen or i have time to deal with asinine things like this. we can better spend our energy elsewhere. but unfortunately, we have to go back to the store and question... yet again... the charges to our credit card.