Mixed Emotions

(This is from Feb. 2012.)

At long last, I joined the world of smart phones yesterday afternoon, but at a cost. For years, I've carried three lines for my teenagers, one for myself, and one for another person, who no longer is part of our family plan.

When so-called "updates" came along, as the cell phone carriers like to call them, first I upgraded the kids' phones. But this time, they urged me to upgrade mine, so I did, to an iPhone 4S.

Meanwhile, I gave my old phone to my daughter, to replace the one she has had for a couple years; that had been her first phone. It was covered with stickers and filled with photos.

Neither of us realized that by turning in her phone (for a $30 discount on mine), we were losing her childhood photo album. The phone would be wiped, all data expunged.

Last night, after what should have been a joyous occasion for both of us, she was near tears as she recognized what had been lost.

I should have known better, but the agent who helped us tended to mumble, and I couldn't really hear some of what he said. he almost certainly explained that all her data would be lost (once her contacts were transferred over to her new phone), but I doubt he said that her photos would be too.

So it ended up a decidedly mixed experience, with me angry at myself -- what is $30 when we were throwing away her first photo album?

It's a confusing time to be a consumer, and I'm not the world's best or savviest consumer by a long stretch. There couldn't be a better reminder of that than what happened yesterday.

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