Alan Flips Out

 

This is not my phone

The weirdest thing happened yesterday. It started in the morning when a notice popped up on my phone. Something about the sim card. So of course I ignored it like I ignore most notices that pop up. Then later in the day, after not getting any phone calls all day, I tried to call my upstairs neighbor Dennis. Now my phone was telling me that I could only make emergency calls and that I was not connected to a network. Holy crap, not being able to make phone calls is an emergency and I seriously considered dialing 911. Instead I tried to call Consumer Cellular. Again the phone said 'no'. So I poked at the little button that said "Start Chat". The chat box came up and told me I was number seventy in line. I'm old and I have a lot of time on my hands, so I sat there for forty minutes watching the number slowly go down until I was next in line. That is some kind of excitement, being next in line on an over worked tech support chat line. After a bunch of formalities where I had to prove that I was who I said I was, the tech support lady started looking at my problem. After a bit she asked me, "Are you using the red flip phone to call out?"

Red flipping flip phone? I'm old, but not that old.

"No, I don't own a red flip phone. I've never owned a red flip phone."

"The system is telling me that you have a red flip phone...."

Panic swept through me. "Has my phone been hacked. Is some old geezer using a red flip phone clone of my phone to buy shit?"

"Please sir, give me a few moments to figure out what happened and I'll get back to you."

So I waited, about half an hour. Finally she came back and gave me the story. It seems that one of their employees was activating somebody's red flip phone earlier in the day and entered one digit wrong, which deactivated my phone.

"Okay sir, you'll either have to let us send you a new sim card or we can make an appointment at Target so a tech at the store can swap out the sim card. I have a five o'clock opening right now.

It was four, forty five. The Super Bowl was to kick off in just forty five minutes, but I took the appointment anyway. I really have to give Consumer Cellular and Target credit. I was able to get to the store, get the phone working, and get back in time to see the Super Bowl kickoff. One other thing. I got Consumer Cellular to give me one month of free service for all the inconvenience.