A pink phone does not indicate that I'm dumb!

So, about 2 weeks ago my month-old pink Razr said that my charger was "unauthorized." I've never lost, broken, or had a phone stolen, so I don't have insurance. I guess that was dumb, but all the same. I brought it into the Verizon store at Metro Center the next morning. I was told that my phone had water damage and that I'd need to buy another one because the charging portal was unfixable.

I keep the phone exclusively in my purse.

There's no way in hell it's water damaged. I had no choice as the battery was almost shot, so I bought another phone. I tried to talk to the horrible woman in Customer Service, but they wouldn't give me the promo price. She was so horrible, in fact, that I didn't even bother arguing. I knew that I'd do better to contact Verizon directly.

When I gave the phone to the technician to transfer my numbers over ($10!), he said it might not work since the portal was broken. But it worked fine. This indicated to me that perhaps I was being screwed.

I sent the phone down to my mother in Alabama via priority mail. We have had Verizon for so long (my Dad's a doctor and had one of those bag phones back in the 80s) that my mom knows the technician at her Verizon store pretty well.

She brought it into him and guess what? The phone WASN'T water damaged at all.

On the back of the phone, a white dot indicated corrosion... the white dot hadn't changed to red. It turns out, my charger was faulty. It also turns out that the Customer Service people do make commission off phone sales.

My mother sent the phone back to me, but not before calling the Verizon store manager... who apologized, refunded the shipping costs, and said she'd allow the second phone to be returned no problem. "My goal," my Mom said to me, "is to close that store down and/or own Verizon."

I brought the phone back. The Manager was actually very nice and completely apologetic. She left the Customer Service rep to return the old phone. "And what was the problem with the new phone," she asked me. "Your store lied to me and basically tried really hard to screw me out of $250." "Oh, yeah, I heard about this. I am so sorry for all the trouble it caused you." I felt sort-of bad for being a bit rude... but not really.

On the phone with Customer Service trying to transfer the service back to my old phone, she says to me, "there's a $20 transfer fee that he's saying isn't waved in the notes. Did you know about that?" "I'm not paying that $20 fee. If he'd like to talk to me or your Manager about it, feel free to pass on the phone." The fee was waved. My phone was restored.

I laughed a little when she called the phone to make sure it worked again and Jessica Simpson's A Public Affair played. Don't judge an owner by the color of her phone is the lesson here... and find a new Verizon store.