Now last year, last summer, in the midst of the prospecting season and into a couple of weeks of homelessness I had need of a cellphone.
I'm morally opposed to cellphones. I, I don't need a cellphone. But when you're living out of your car and people want to keep in touch, children, family and such, a cellphone or some means of contact becomes a necessity.
I went to "The Source". Set up with a new phone, phone number, all to be billed later on my bill. And they up-sold me on their extended warranty - if anything went wrong, for $70 extra bucks, I could just bring in my phone and exchange it for a new one.
From everything I've heard things go wrong. Mostly screens breaking, occasional dips in water, I'm going to be off in adverse circumstances in the bush, generally I'm aware that the extended warranty is a scam, but in this instance it just seems prudent. I buy the extended warranty.
On Monday my phone doesn't charge. A connection issue. I fiddle with it, screw around, it's not working, time to cash in on the extended warranty, back to The Source. Thank god for the extended warranty.
The clerk requests a receipt - by some miracle I have it, and by another it's survived a year and a half in my car's trunk without (mostly, in essential parts) fading, they print these receipts like this on purpose, I swear, cheap thermal fax paper that is unlikely to survive even a week of your extended warranty...
...and he pulls up my account, hums, haws, acknowledges the extended warranty, then explains that they'll return it to the factory for refurbishment, it'll take 2-4 weeks,....
I can't go 2-4 weeks without a phone. Who can?
OR - I can upgrade my cell-phone plan, pay out the balance, get a new phone....
I choose the latter. More fiddling, swapping out the sim card, 10 minutes and $150 dollars in unanticipated charges later I have a new contract, a new phone....
"Would you like to buy the extended warranty?" the clerk suggests..."Only $70.00...3 years, anything goes wrong with your phone and you can just swap it out for a new one...."
Uh-huh. NO. The Source, Extended Warranty, Zero out of 5 stars.