Free Starbucks Gift Card - Janie's Contact Contest

I've been TRICKED.

I killed my iPhone today. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t drop it. I didn’t go swimming with it. I didn’t even cuss it overmuch before or after it cratered. So, no, it didn’t get its feelings hurt. iPhones are sensitive, but manhattan!! This was too much.

I could call out, as long as I was on my bluetooth in my truck. When I tried to make calls without the aid of any devices (and yes, before you ask, my household has arrived at that point in technology today.) I couldn’t hear who I was calling.

They could hear me, mind you, especially when those vibrant words started coming out of my mouth. Okay, the only one that could hear me was ThatManILove, because that's all I called. I was SO frustrated.

But, I have the special, whoopteedoo, bells and whistles Best Buy Geek Squad replacement plan made especially for smart phones. The one I pay $14 a month for, on our phones + my boys phones. That way, we can drop them, go swimming with them, etc., and get our phones replaced for free. (Did I just say free? I mean $14 a month on top of all the other goofy charges.)

But, hey, it’s better than the Apple Care Plan. Which has NO replacement warranty.

So, I bop into Best Buy. When we bought MY iPhone (which was, by the way, after we bought our sons’ iPhones) , we had the Best Buy guys go over the replacement plan.

As I understood it, I bring my phone in. If they have to send it off, and if they have one, they’ll give you a loaner iPhone. And your phone will be back in, say, 5-8 days. The quick return plan.

That’s not what happened today. And they don’t give out loaner iPhones. Nor will Best Buy’s loaner phones handle my massive amounts of contacts. Maybe I should have discussed that in more detail prior to buying the iPhone.

My options:

Take their loaner phone and wait on my phone to be returned.

Don’t do anything, and just rely on “devices”. That won’t work, it’s a business phone.

Buy a new phone...at full price. Oh, yeah. I’m hopping on that - that’s a horrlble idea!

I thought about it. Hard. And then, I realized - 3/4ths of this family has iPhones with replacement plans. (ThatManILove still hasn’t given up on his crackberry, and I’m beginning to realize why.)

I bought the new phone. And this time, I got the iPhone 3GS (Woohoo, Yeah!) but, no, I wasn’t looking for an excuse to upgrade. Don’t go there. I couldn’t even work the one I had!) Now, should the boys or I crater another iPhone, we’ll have a replacement within the family to have while we wait on Best Buy to send us a new one.

ThatManILove says our favorite fix when anything is broken is to throw money at it. We’ve found that solution most often isn’t the correct one.

Hopefully, this time, I did the right thing? Anyway, during all this drill, I thought of a contest. (It helped me keep my cool at Best Buy, I promise.)

Here’s the contest for you:

Guess how many contacts I have in my iPhone and I’ll send you a Starbucks Gift Card with exactly that much money on it! Each contact will have the value of a penny...so, if I have 2678 contacts, you’ll get a Starbucks card worth $26.78.

Hint: Top number has been 5237, but I’ve cleaned up my act a quite a bit. Bottom number is more than 4850. Pick a number between 4850 and 5237 and write it in the comments!

Contest will end Monday at 6 p.m. Closest one to the number by 6 p.m. wins the Starbucks Gift Card. You must enter by commenting on the blog (no e-mail entries!).

Have fun!