Saturday, April 23, 2011

Out of The Cave!

...and the sun shines bright! Yes, I have stepped out of the cave and made my very first purchase on Amazon. Just recently. I guess I have been in the very very dark ages, as I have heard that there are decent bargains on the site, but never actually bought anything. Until recently. However, I didn't buy anything too terribly exciting, just a phone battery.

A little backstory: My phone decided to go *pop* last July without any reason or notice. Guess it was just too stressed out, as was I at the time, but that's beside the point. At first, super glue did fix the thing. However, its efficacy wore off way too quickly, about a couple of months later. Needless to say I just started winging it, replacing the little piece of plastic whenever it cracked out of line. It worked. Until Wednesday evening, that is. Earlier in the day it started acting a little weird; not closing correctly a couple of times, but I had been able to pop the plastic back into line when it popped out.

I placed a call to the DH and after that it was all over. It didn't close correctly again, in fact, the little silver ribbon connecting the display to the rest of the phone tore! The display quit working altogether, and I eventually learned, with the help of DH's phone, that mine had quit working, period. I attempted to call myself using his phone, but all that happened was the keypad would light up for half a second then nothing. Even if the ringer had been inadvertently silenced, the keypad should have stayed lit. fml. Here I was, without a phone and very importantly, without an alarm clock. (It's not very often these days that I wake up without the thing.) fml. What was I going to do? A search of the house for a spare clock came up fruitless. fml.Was it time to run to the store to grab the cheapest one on the shelf and use that?

A brainstorming sesh over dinner revealed a little-before remembered fact: I had another phone lying around. Found it. Charger? Check. Used DH's phone again to call customer service and 7.5 minutes later I had a semi-new phone that worked. TG!

Fast-forward to the next day, when it was *supposedly* fully charged. Eight hours later, the message my phone had so proudly displayed proved to be a boldfaced lie. The thing died, when I was trying to call the DH. Go figure. A quick search of the phone manufacturer's web site proved fruitless; they wanted fifty-someodd dollars for an extended life battery and probably more for a new battery door that wouldn't have matched my phone anyway. Um, no thanks, dudes. A quick search of the internet pointed me to some havily discounted sites. I bought the exact battery I wanted and needed, for about 98% less than what those other guys wanted. With shipping, I paid a total of ten bucks and change for a new battery, with expedited shipping.

Hopefully, in a few days' time, I will have a phone battery that actually holds a charge reliably. Tonight, it seems OK; it is currently going for the record at 12+ hours strong (the past couple of days we've been lucky for it to hold a charge for 12 hours. Yes, 12 hours.), but we'll see what time tonight it wakes me up with its low-battery beep. Nah, it won't. Knowing my luck, it'll wait until we're in the car or already at grammy's house to decide it's tired and wants its recharge.

1 comment:

Amy said...

We had to do that with our lap top charger. Got it for $60 less then the manufacturer wanted it for and after shipping (3 days on the nose) it was only $18!! The manufacturer wanted $80+.

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