A bad way to start the day

As I was leaving for work this morning, I slipped on my deck outside the front door. My coffee thermos went flying. My breakfast went flying. My iPhone went flying. I went flying too.

I bruised my left elbow and hip and my ribs a bit, but I'll be fine. The thermos was fine. But, my iPhone was trashed. The touch-screen broke, although it still works at the moment, mostly because I had a screen protector on the phone, which held the screen together.

I went to two different AT&T stores this morning. The first store, where I bought the phone, was just plain rude. My only option was to buy a new phone for full retail price, sign a new contract, and simply pay, pay, pay. I walked out of that store and I will never return there.

The second store couldn't help much more, but they were polite and understanding. They gave me the phone number for Apple's iPhone tech support. It didn't take too long until I got to an actual human in tech support - and he was very helpful. I explained that I was going out of town tomorrow and I wanted to replace the phone as quickly as possible. He said there were no stores in VT that could do a swap (I still have to pay for the replacement, but it's not anywhere near full price), but he wanted to know my travel route. I told him and he found a big Apple store for me in NY. He gave me their phone number and suggested I call them.

I called and explained the situation. The lady was polite, said that they could exchange the phone on the spot tomorrow, she booked me a time slot, and quoted me a price. Even though I'm disappointed to pay the replacement price, I did break the thing.

Score: Apple 100, AT&T 5.

AT&T would get a zero if it weren't for one sympathetic ear and a person who handed me a phone number.

I guess it's not surprising that AT&T would have terrible customer support and Apple would have great support. It's consistent with how people view those two companies for the most part. It's too bad that Apple chose to give AT&T a monopoly on the iPhone.

Workouts:
I planned to run last night, but my wife and I had to deal with some issues with our son. By the time we were finished with that, it was almost 8:00. So, I went to the gym and got in a quick lifting workout. Tonight, I'll run 10 in the rain after work. I'm hoping to get in a couple more decent runs tomorrow and Saturday, but we'll be visiting family for the weekend, so I'm not sure how my time will go.