My cell phone died yesterday. Well, it didn’t really die, but it’s critically ill and in a coma. The screen flashes on and off, I can’t receive calls, and it’s totally unresponsive.

So now I’m on the phone with “Alicia,” my helpful and friendly Indian customer-service representative. I’m telling her about my problem, and how it is entirely due to a manufacturing defect by Motorola, since the phone has not suffered any physical damage.

Now she’s putting me on hold for the moment, and the hold music is some haunting sitar stuff with a cool beat. Someone at Verizon has a sense of humor, anyway.

Back to Alicia. She’s telling me my options:

1. Remove the battery and put it back in
2. Call Verizon
3. Take it in to a service center
4. Send it in to Motorola to get fixed under warranty

Okay, thank you, Alicia. Bye-bye.

Here are the problems with those options:

1. Did not work.
2. Verizon’s reps are friendly, but not very empowered to help the customer with problems.
3. I think they’re gonna charge me an arm and a leg.
4. It’ll take two weeks, during which time I’ll either be without a phone, or using an old one which I’ll have to activate.

Damn.