Thursday evening, I was sitting at the dinner table when my nokia 6650 ran through a start up routine and chimed to let me know I had a text message. I ignored this thinking that I could check it after dinner. Then it repeated the sequence of sounds again. After the second time, I took it out of its holster on my belt and found it wouldn't do anything. I removed the battery several times but neither the MobileSpeaks or the phone functions would work. Friday morning I went to the AT&T store in Jefferson City to see what the problem might be. After forty-five minutes, the store personnel said that the software in the phone was corrupted and nothing could be done to fix it. When I returned home that evening, I put the phone on the charger and it got very hot. Fearing that the battery would combust, I removed it. While I was still at the phone store, I called the disability hotline for AT&T and was told that the only option was to purchase a new phone and repurchase the MobileSpeaks software. The phone store didn't have any of the accessible phones in stock, so not wanting to purchase a phone I couldn't see I ordered another 6650 and asked them to please loadd the software on it before sending it to me. The replacement phone is $49, but with shipping and the addition of the MobileSpeaks software, my cost was $160. My question is, has anyone else experienced such a weird malfunction? The only good thing is that the newest version of MobileSpeaks is one that remains with the account number rather than being tied to the individual phone as is the case with the version I bought two years ago. Or at least I was assured this by the people on the hotline. The bad news is that I will be without a phone for a week to ten days. Since we took out our land line some months ago, I am temporarily phoneless. I don't mind replacing a phone when I have done something like losing it in a snowbank, dropping it in to water, or crushing it underfoot, but this is just plain frustrating. It feels like someone sent my phone a silver bullet virus and it killed my phone. I can't even find my old Motroola phone to try switching the simcard to see if my address book is intact and I could use it in the interim. I feel that the least that could have been done was to ask for my phone so that they could investigate the source of the problem. When a computer gets a virus that corrupts its operating system, there is a chance to repair the damage. This doesn't appear the case with cell phones.
_______________________________________________ ATI (Adaptive Technology Inc.) A special interest affiliate of the Missouri Council of the Blind http://moblind.org/membership/affiliates/adaptive_technology
