If you are about to get a new cell phone...

DON'T TRADE IN YOUR OLD CELL PHONE!

I'm glad to explain, but for now just believe me and read until you are satisfied. If you are about to get a new cell phone, let me share what my wife and I just endured.

My phone was damaged and hers was about to be inoperable, so we decided to be brave and strike out to the local Verizon store. Here we found a wonderfully informative young man who sold us on converting to the new Google Pixel 3X phones. DON'T DO IT! But let me first explain that after we waited for five days for the Verizon guy to fetch these new techno-wonders, and were disappointed when we showed up to get them, that this nice young man had to be summoned from someplace else in his street clothes to tell us they were not in the store, and one had been “jacked.” I guess that means stolen.

We smelled something fishy and left... not surprised but yes, a couple of disgruntled retired people... visited the phone center at Sam's, then settled on getting the PIXELs at Best Buy. Already sold on the product, we gladly paid a little more and got outfitted, me with a Pixel 3XL and my wife with a 3X... and because I was too distrusting, I did not let go of my old, damaged phone, because it had a mountain of images and videos in it... and (LUCKILY) I was not so sure about the information transfer...

My wife sadly, naively traded in her phone... it was swiped clean before she realized that she had lost precious and sentimentally important texts... like her father's last voicemail to her... and they were GONE. We soldiered on... and I went home to play with my new super-duper Google Pixel camera and all my wonderful new picture making tools...

Then the real debacle began! My photos from my iphone had not all transferred. Not even a tenth of them. None of my videos. We went back to the Best Buy store to try to learn what had gone wrong. A nice young fellow explained that we needed to establish a connection to a “Cloud”- (I thought I had!) and he recommended the Google Cloud, and started it for me, and the download began... we thought. Next day, I had about the same number...basically all my photos for the past month, and few random ones from seven years ago! The Googel Cloud, accessible from my computer, had not downloaded any of my photos from the iCloud. Now I got concerned. I still had my photos and memories in the old damaged phone, thank goodness, because I had not traded it in. And I looooved the my new Pixel phone... for about five minutes.

The Pixel camera was great, but the photo tools were not as handy or effective as my old iphone 7's. You are supposed to download an App for that, if your really care or know the difference. So I studied Apps... then decided on a movie App... the latest Photo Shop free app. But I still had very few photos to work with.

One peculiar thing, the “Cloud” was sending my new phone some very old images... somewhat randomly, from as far back at seven years ago... many of which I had originally deleted... in other words, it appeared that everything I ever photographed was still in existence... in the iCloud, and when it sends them to the new phone, they come raw, unedited, and even undeleted. So half of what I did have were duplicates, outtakes, and stuff that I did not want.

I was more than underwhelmed with our advances in technology, and we just wanted our old phones back... with our old stuff in them. We went back to the store to trade-in our purchases, get iphones and be done with it. Then we stumbled into disaster.

The lady at the customer service counter was more than understanding... she immediately went to work to satisfy us. I was glad to get something else, but still retained ownership of my old damaged phone...We traded in our Pixels and purchased iphones at a considerable savings, and then the worst thing possible happened. The Best Buy people at the Customer Service counter did not know that when they removed those tiny little microchip cards from the Google Pixel phones, that everything in them is erased. LOST. REALLY... lost.

A supervisor came along about that time and told us what had happened... but there was no recourse... the information in both phones had been lost completely, and there was nothing that could be done. We were starting out all over again, totally fresh, no contacts, no photos. We went to the phone center there at Best Buy to get our phones updated as much as possible, since I still had my old damaged phone.

Once again, the Best Buy cell phone person waiting on us, this was now about the third, began trying their best to recover what they could. They began a download, once again from the “Cloud,” which was supposed to help me transfer the contacts and photos I had in my damaged phone into my new iphone. My poor wife was speechless, having just lost years worth of contacts and messages and photos. The worker explained that it might take a while, so we went to get something to eat. Wife walked like a war refugee in the parking lot, almost unaware of moving vehicles, stupified by such an unexpected loss. I was hopeful that my old broken phone would pull my transfer through.

To cut to the chase, (sorry about all that detail!) we were assured that it was all loading up, and we could take it home and it would all be OK. But when it was “finished,” it was no better than the first downloads in the Pixels. Random, and still sending unwanted, recently deleted images which I thought had been sent to the bad place. I gave my wife a few contact numbers which we had in common. There were not that many! I depended on her to keep certain contacts, and she depended on me. So call her if you are one of her buds, and let her reload your number.

Our daughter, our hero, came and helped me retrieve my images, in ways even she does not completely understand. She was able to recover all of my photos... (they are still loading!) and even my numerous “Memories” video/slideshows made with the iphone 7 movie program... which are quite good. Hallelujah!

As best as I can understand, as long as you have that old phone, and the data it contains, even if the phone service has been transferred to a new phone, it still is connected to the “Cloud” and can keep your contacts and photographic images “alive.” It is the lifeline. But your average cell phone salesperson has no clue how to adequately transfer what it has access to. You'll need better people than who occupy the local Verizon outlets to get it done.

So:

1. Don't let go of your old phone until you are totally satisfied with your info transfer. You can always trade it in later. My wife lost all of her texts because she traded in a phone which they only valued at twenty bucks!
2. Don't trust the Verizon guys, they are scamming or something. At one point we commented to one another on the unkempt nature of the place, and the unprofessional way they were handling customers. (This was in Bell County) Certainly I was skeptical when the salesman told me he would drive over fifty miles to Georgetown get our phones at another location during the weekend, and have them for us next week... and was not at all surprised when he dumped a big lie on us.
3. DONT LET THEM EXCHANGE “SIM CARDS” WITHOUT AN EXPERT TECHNICIAN PRESENT. Ask lots of questions... Different phones have different data memory essentials... Your average salesperson is not going to know all the changes, until it is too late! I kept saying, “It's like they never sold a phone in this store before!” And I might add, these were recenty outdated Pixel phones...
4. Find a way to copy your Contact info so you still have it, no matter what. Back up your images with something in your own possession! The “Cloud” seems only to keep data but never releases much of it, EVEN TO PROFESSIONALS, and when it does, it is random and RAW. Thankfully, I had emailed myself many of my favorite images over the years.
5. Keep your daughter handy. :)