Quick follow up to my last blog posting
About one day after writing the article my wife, Linda, inadvertently left her cell phone in her jeans. Now that doesn’t sound so bad, except she threw those same jeans in the washing machine (yes, the phone was still in the pocket).
Needless to say the phone wasn’t working so we had no choice but to go to the Sprint store (otherwise known as a refuge for the unemployable). After a 15 minute wait, the totally apathetic salesperson told us that we had two choices: 1) Buy a new phone for full price (minimum $170.00) or, 2) My wife could use the $75.00 allowance she was entitled to, and put that toward a new phone; however, that would extend our contract for 2 more years. He also said there was no way we would ever get the phone to work again. I didn’t like either choice, especially since their selection of phones is crap, so we left.
Luckily, awhile back I found an article online that tells you what to do in case your cell phone falls in the water. It’s titled, “My Phone Took a Swim,” and you can find it at, http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3504_7-6767391-1.html?tag=bubbl_1.
The first thing I did when Linda told me what happened was, I took out the battery and dried it with a towel. I then left the phone sitting open on my dresser. A few hours later I put the battery back in and was able to power up the phone. It wouldn’t do anything else but it was a start.
When we got back from the Sprint store I took a hair dryer and dried the phone (I used a warm setting, not hot and low power only, not high). I did all this with the battery out of the phone. I then left it sitting on my desk overnight.
When I came down in the morning I put the battery back in the phone and guess what: that’s right, it worked! Not only that but the address book was intact and the phone’s as good as new.
Right away this told me something very important about Sprint. They’re far more interested in making a sale than helping a client and developing real client relationships. Not once did they offer to try and fix my wife’s phone. They wouldn’t even look at it. All they tried to do was convince us it was unsalvageable. Do you think that could be one of the reasons why they’ve lost more than 1 MILLION of their most profitable customers in the 1st 3 months of 2008?