On Thu, 21 Feb 2019 16:32:09 -0800 (PST) Rich Shepard <[email protected]> dijo:
>I'll probably buy a used, but like-new Nokia 6.1 from amazon. My little story about buying a used phone: Once upon a time, about 2012 or 2013 or so, My old phone was too long in the tooth, and I wanted a Samsung Note 3, one of the few phones at the time that came with a stylus and a note taking app. I found a fellow selling exactly what I wanted on our local Craigslist. A couple phone calls later I was on my way to his place. At the time my old phone was with T-Mobile, and so was his Note 3. He still needed a phone, so he offered me $100 off his price for the Note 3 in exchange for my old phone. Money and phones changed hands and I left with his almost new Note 3. Before leaving, from his place, we called T-Mobile and they quickly switched their records for both of us. They assured me that his Note 3 was paid for with a clean ESN. I took my new toy home and spent some time setting it up the way I wanted it. I happily used it for about six months, and then one day it was dead. It was still under warranty, so I called T-Mobile. It turns out that the fellow had lied to me and so had T-Mobile. It was not paid for, the fellow had defaulted on his contract, and T-Mobile had killed it. And by 'killed it,' I mean it was utterly dead, even if I paid off his contract T-Mobile was powerless to revive it. After a bit I found a fellow on the east coast who made a business of fixing phones that had been killed by the carriers. In the case of my phone that meant replacing the motherboard. His price was only $50, including the new motherboard, which came from outside the US. He even rooted it for me at no extra charge. I shipped it to him overnight and he shipped it back to me overnight. A few days later I was back in business. The phone is sitting in my shirt pocket as I write this. And one final thought - this experience left me rather pissed off at T-Mobile. I didn't mind what they did - they should have the right to enforce their contract. No, what pissed me off is that they told me it was paid for. It was probably an employee who wasn't paying attention, but it caused me grief. So when I got my phone back I went carrier shopping. I liked T-Mobile for their bandwidth, better at the time than anyone else in town. But then I discovered that MetroPCS used the T-Mobile network, so I signed up with them. And for the same service their price was $30 a month, compared to $40 at T-Mobile. Later T-Mobile sewed up all of MetroPCS by just buying them outright (well, actually, their parent company, Deutsche Telekom). So in your shopping consider MetroPCS to be T-Mobile's bargain basement. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
