It has been DIY week here at my house. We had to replace the water heater last week, which we saved a few hundred doing it ourselves, and we just fixed my cell phone! My lovely two year old decided to "fix" my Palm Centro (a small PDA) with his little plastic hammer. Who would of thought such a small hammer could do so much damage! One hit and my touchscreen was smashed into a zillion pieces. Sprint completely lost my loyalty as a customer over this little incident (see below if you want to hear me complain...lol) as we found out we did not have coverage for my phone. Since it was only a year old I started checking into just fixing the touch screen. What I found out was amazing. I was able to order the part and do it ourselves for $18!!!

I can only help with the screen as that is what we have had experience with, but I am sure there are other things that can be fixed on cell phones with a little online research. Before this I would have never thought I could fix a phone, but we did! I called a repair shop and they wanted $100 just to take it apart. That was unacceptable. I did hear him say it probably needed a digitizer, big mistake on his part, I now knew the part name. I got on ebay and found the part for $18 including the necessary tools and shipping. They even had a super helpful video on how to take the phone apart and replace the piece. I watched the video and decided "I can do that" so I ordered the part.

It arrived today and hubby and I set out to fix the phone, it was a little tricky but nothing to difficult. We had it fixed in under 20 minutes and it works perfectly!!! Evidently you can repair the screens on Ipods and any touchscreen phone relatively easy. If you are interested in doing this try THIS seller, he shipped my purchase super fast and offers lots of helpful TUTORIALS on how to do it. I am not going to go into detail on how to do it as the tutorial really does show you every step. Just make sure you get the right part. It really was a lot easier than I thought and I LOVE the fact we were able to say "Screw you Sprint" and do it ourselves....LOL.

My Sprint Gripe
Sprint topped my evil list last week. I have had them for over 10 years with some problems but nothing serious. Today they officially made me a non-loyal customer. As I said my son smashed my phone. I called to file a claim and was told I did not have coverage. Now I knew this was incorrect because 5 years ago I replaced a phone when I dropped it, with no problems. My plan has not changed and I did not change the coverage. I have always had equipment replacement coverage (or so I thought) as it turns out I had "equipment service and repair" which is basically useless. Here is how the it went...

Call 1 - to Warranty company
I was told I didn't have insurance and that I needed to call Sprint. 10 minutes
Call 2 - to Sprint
I was told I did have insurance and that they had fixed it. 30 mintues
Call 3 - to Warranty company
I was told I STILL didn't have insurance and I needed to call Sprint again - 15 minutes
Call 4,5,6 - to Sprint, for some reason the calls kept dropping
I was told the other operator was incorrect and that I didn't have coverage. Spoke with supervisor who told me I had never had insurance which I informed was incorrect and eventually hung up on him - 45 minutes

Basically I have been paying $4 a month for 5 years for something that is completely worthless and it took me almost two hours to find this out. I told the last guy he needed to refund my $250 since they had greatly misrepresented their product, of course he didn't but I thought it was worth a shot. Now let me explain one thing, I worked in retail for over 7 years during college and waited tables. I get it... customer service jobs like theirs are not easy so I am always extremely nice and simply want to find a resolution so I am very accomodating and friendly. I live by the saying "you get more bee's with honey than vinegar". The last guy was the single worst person I have EVER dealt with in a customer service dept and he was a supervisor. Either someone had ran over his dog that day or he had a serious chip on his shoulder. When I hung up on him I was the most upset I have EVER been after a phone call. He did absolutely nothing to try and help me fix my problem.

Oh well it is over now and of course since they are a billion dollar company and I am just little ole me, there isn't much I can do to them....except post this on my blog...LOL. After all of that the only assistance they could offer was to ship it in and possibly have it fixed by a technician for a $135 fee and I might get it back in 3 weeks, so it is really nice to be able to say...

HA HA on them, I did it for $18...WOOHOOO!