My iPhone works great--the push technology is so fast that I can update either on my Macbook or the iPhone and it pushes through in under a minute. I get Twitter updates on my phone with Twitterific and Facebook through the Facebook app, If I need to see a web page quickly and am not near a computer or wireless, the iPhone comes through. It works great except for one little recent development: when someone calls, I can’t hear them. When I call, I still can’t hear them. It is not the volume setting. It is not my ears since it does this for ears on other people as well. Even though it seemed unlikely to help, I did the Apple-suggested restore using iTunes and guess what? It didn’t help and now all those extra apps need to be added back on.

So, now Saturday’s pretty much over and the replacement phone sat in Memphis instead of arriving here. Yes, I know Saturday delivery is not standard for FedEx, but I believed the Apple guy when he said Saturday delivery was possible. In terms of customer service, this simply is not right. I made the call to Apple in the At&T store, They could have handed me a new iPhone. The stock was there. However, according to Apple and AT&T, handing me an iPhone is a silly idea that simply can’t be done. That idea could have worked in an Apple Store, but the closest one is 3 and a half hours or so away in Kansas City on the Country Club Plaza. I now know I should have started driving on Friday and just figured the seven or eight hours in the car plus an hour or so in the Apple Store was a reasonable exertion to expect from an AT&T/Apple customer. I could have called ahead. No--wait--I couldn’t, because my phone won’t let me hear people on the other end.

So, now I probably won’t be home when FedEx attempts delivery on Monday since I teach at 9 and 11. I’ll look for a sub, but I feel wrong about getting a sub for anything but dire illness, which doesn’t really happen more often that once in five years or so. I guess I’ll email a couple of people and see, or I can gamble that the truck will come before my latest time to leave of 8:15 AM. Individually, I’m pretty happy with AT&T and Apple. Together though, especially adding FedEx into the mix, it’s too easy to shift blame, making the real loser in that equation the customer.