Symbiosis60

On a recent trip to Sam's Club store in Evanston, IL this past weekend I had a funny encounter.  First of all let me state for the record that I'm not a big supported of such behemoths as Sam's Club, but due to my current condition (herniated lower back disc) I wanted to see if I could get an inversion bed cheaper at Sam's Club.

So my painful story aside, I walked in to the store with my friend, looking cool, feeling sexy, wind in my hair I pulled out my G1 to play around with Shop Saavy.  After passing some LCD TV's I asked my friend to stop by Sam's mobile phone stand as I wanted to look at the new Samsung Behold.  So after a few minutes of browsing I aksed about Behold.  Unfortunately they did not have them yet.  The girl I spoke to noticed G1 in my hand.  The first question that the nice girl asked me was how I like it.  It struck a brief impromptu conversation about this and that, the goods and the bads.  After a few minutes of chatter the nice girl said "I got one too but I have to send it back to T-Mobile for service as I locked it up".  She pulled the phone out and to be honest I was expecting to see a phone locked due to an improper SIM card password.  This was not the case.  Her G1 was locked because of too many incorrect password attempts at the initial screen.  The issue here was that I believe this was a T-Mobile provided device for the reps to use but also to show to the potential clients.  What surprised me was the fact the this nice innocent girl was told by T-Mobile that she had to send the phone back  to have it unlocked and restored back to the factory settings.  I asked her to show me the phone after which I did the "Power + Home button" reboot into safe mode and restored it back to the factory settings.  At the booth there was a young guy working together with her.  Both of them were simply amazed and almost kissed my hands to thank me for doing this.  The girl took a piece of paper and wrote down exactly what I did just for the future.  What amazes me is that T-Mobile did not provide such a basic information to their own reps and instead they had to rely on a stranger's help which definitely does not make Sam's "Techy" people look good.  At the end the girl REALLY appreciated my help and offered a discount either on a new activation or on an accessory.  Since I already have a car charger, I asked my friend if he wanted one so he scored a few bucks off :-)  Happy ending.

The morale of the story:  Geeks Unite :-)