Simple Times

Today. Whew!

Today was the culmination of a sequence of events that began when my mobile phone quit working, about two months ago. Allow me to explain.

My cellphone didn't exactly quit working. It lost the ability to make and receive phone calls over the cellular network. The cellphone company is called Ting Mobile. They have low prices compared to most cellular companies. But for now all you need to know is that the cellphone is Ting and the cordless phones are magicJack. Except ... sometimes the cellphone is magicJack, too. But I'll get to that.

Making and receiving phone calls is pretty much the reason I have a cell phone, so when you take that away, it really puts a dent in the whole reason for having a cellphone. But the phone still worked, so that for a long time I didn't realize it wasn't working, if that makes sense. 

The phone worked for me because I use WhatsApp for almost all my personal (non-business) phone calls and texts. WhatsApp works over the Internet, and the Ting phone could still use the Internet to send and receive data, it just couldn't use the cellular network. I spend a lot of time at home and the phone is always linked to my Internet router, so when it quit working (the cellphone, not the router) I didn't notice at first.

Besides my cell phone, I have another phone. I have a cordless phone on my computer desk, and another cordless phone in my bedroom, and they both use magicJack, which is a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone company. With magicJack, phone calls and texts to anywhere in the US and Canada are free. Okay, not entirely free. You have to buy the magicJack device and pay a small amount per year to use the device. The magicJack that I have plugs into my router, and my phone plugs into the magicJack. They assign you a number, and then you can make "free" phone calls from your magicJack-enabled phone(s). Using magicJack costs me about $25 per year for unlimited use.

You may think I'm getting off topic here, but I just want to explain why I didn't notice when my cell phone quit working. But first, I have to explain something else. The company that sells the magicJack is named magicJack, and magicJack (the company, not the gadget) has a free app for your cellphone that lets your cellphone use magicJack. The app, which is called magicApp, connects to your modem using WiFi, or if you're away from your home it can connect to the Internet using the phone's cell network. Of course, if it does that—if it uses the cell network—then you'll probably pay for the minutes you use.

Almost 100% of the time, I'm at home when I use my phone, so I make and receive free calls over the Internet instead of using the cell network. Plus, there's this: I'm in the habit of misplacing my cellphone. When I enter the house, I put the cellphone down somewhere, and then I can't find it, and so I go to my cordless phone and dial my cellphone number. The cellphone rings, and I follow the sound to the phone. It always works. 

But then one day, it quit working. Instead of ringing the cellphone, my call went to voicemail. Very strange. I decided to do some investigation, but I kept putting it off. I had other things to do, they were more pressing, etc., etc. But I wasn't sure whether the problem was in my cordless (magicJack) phone or in the cellular (Ting) phone. So to resolve this question, I went to my third phone number, which is a Google Voice number. Yes, folks, I have three phone numbers.

I called my Ting phone and my magicJack phone from my Google Voice phone. The magicJack phone played its musical ringtone, but the Ting phone didn't ring. So I went to the Ting Mobile website and went to their tech support chat box and ...

This is where it gets exhausting. I spent a long time troubleshooting the situation with their tech support, and they decided my cellphone (which I had purchased from them years ago) might have a bad SIM card. So they Fedexed me a new SIM card, and it arrived in two days. I put the new SIM card into the phone and called tech support again. They had to initialize the SIM card, or whatever you call it when you make the phone work. We spent maybe two hours trying to get the phone to work. I suspected the phone was bad, but I was willing to try various avenues to make it work.

I called back today and got another tech support person, and we worked on it for maybe four hours. The number of things they had me do with the phone was exhausting. Initialize this setting, check that setting. It went on and on and nothing I did made the phone work. After maybe four hours, I knew the phone was bad, though it appeared to be a working phone. So I thanked tech support and tried to order a new cellphone, but I got stuck in a software loop which kept returning me to the previous page. I filled out my name and address, clicked Submit, and I'd be back at the page asking me for my name and address. Over and over. So back to tech support. I ended up using a different browser to place the order. Strange, but we (tech support and I) got it done. The phone is on its way to me—I surely hope.

Upon proofreading this blog post, it's entirely possible that parts of it are inaccurate. I'm not a cellphone expert, nor a VoIP expert. I only know that they work and I pay money. I bought a cheap phone ($100). I don't play games on my phone, I don't watch videos (except for WhatsApp video calls), and I don't need fancy gizmos like a phone with five lenses to take better photos and videos than a $150,000 TV studio camera. I just want to make a phone call and talk. Like we did in olden times. I still miss the lady who always asked "Number please?" when I picked up the phone. I think her name was Mabel. We miss you, Mabel, and those simple times.