We got our new Go-phones yesterday. Decided to put them together this morning.
Well, we have two boxes: in each a phone, a plugin for charging, a back, and what may be the battery. We have a huge double fistful of instructions.

We were told to dial 611 and an ATT person would answer and fix us all up. The word ‘fix’ is at issue, but the f- is ok.

So last night I’d assembled one phone and plugged it in to be powered up. It was.
This morning—when turned on—it says “chip did not register.”
Lovely.
I contact 611 on the landline. All I get is Comcast, natch: that gets you the service of THAT phone, not the one you need fixed. So I go to the computer. I get the info that our cell numbers we’ve had for a decade failed to port. Wah! I have a chat button automatic with that info, I punch it, and I get a nice person on chat, who goes through several inquiries. Me: “They promised me these numbers would ‘port.'” She checks, finds that the person who took my order didn’t make two accounts. Go-phones can only have 1 person per account. La! so we try to get one phone going. We involve Bruce, the finance guy, who immediately wants numbers from the chip. Now we’re busy disassembling the phones, which we’re trying to charge; and then after we’ve got the phone serial #, they want the chip serial number; instructions say the chip has a gold sticker; well, so does the battery. It should be down. Well it’s UP with the phone’s back facing me, but, hey, who’s to say. But no. The chip isn’t under the gold sticker. We finally, with both Melissa and Bruce on the line, discover the chip was installed at the factory, and we don’t know whose is which. But—we then find all the info we’ve been searching for under micro devices my vision won’t see as more than a grey blur—is on honking great stickers on the back of the package. So finally Melissa can get the Verizon account killed and the numbers ported.

Thrilled. But we have the numbers. Then we discover that we need to establish a ‘fund’ so we can have the numbers activated with ATT. So we come up with the credit card and Bruce charges us 100.00 for one phone before telling us it won’t be an autocharge, but Bruce can’t undo the way he did the card charge: he can only charge things. So then, all right, let’s establish an autocharge for phone #2, so we can work with it. We do. But then Bruce tells us the CC company has put the autocharge on hold. We then, still with Melissa and Bruce both on the line, go through gymnastics in the theory the hold is with the CC company to tell the CC company the second charge is legit, in case they had doubts.

But the CC company, reached through half a dozen different menus, says the hold is actually with ATT. So we are back to Bruce to tell him that. He can’t undo that, either. And the second phone won’t touch the money now lodged behind the first phone. So we still have to wait an hour.

We then discovered that we got billed for the welcome message from ATT, and for the little accidental button push that contacted the web, which is billed at a very high rate, so we won’t push that button again.

We still haven’t gotten them with ringtones yet, and still haven’t gotten our phonebook installed, but we’re gaining on it. ATT could have saved 2 employee-hours of work by e-mailing me 3 days ago that we needed a second account and by having CLEAR diagrams, or having the info: “The serial numbers may be on the address sticker”—and they might have enabled me to sign up for autopay online, so all this could have been done smoothly, but thus far, we sort of have phones…

The ringtones suck pondwater, but hopefully we won’t be using them or hearing them often. Jane now has Chococat stuck on her phone and I have a Halloween cat on mine. But we got our phone numbers ported, and we are almost running. These phones were 10.00 each, and have a camera, yet, and texting, and web-access. You may imagine the buttons are not the best. We have no idea about battery life. But at a few dollars a month, we can live with this—and the 100.00 will roll over, come year end, so that will be all good.

What a morning, already!