Phone frustration Friday!

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I’m giving all of you a chance to bow out of this post now. I’m gong to be venting. This is more or less a free write, and as bad as it’ll be, you can thank @vermillionfox for calming me down before I sat at the computer. I’m going to attempt to paint this as not a bad day, because really, it wasn’t. My morning was amazing. During the afternoon, I took @guthrie and his half brother to the comic book store to buy DnD miniatures. @vermillionfox was at Mall Of America with her sister-in-law, and I saw an opportunity.

The boys would be going back to @guthrie’s brothers’ place to hang out. I’ve been having touch screen issues on my iPhone X […this is the third replacement phone that ghosting and lost of touch support problems arose]. @vermillionfox and I haven’t seen It Chapter Two yet, either, so my ambitious plan was to set up a Genius Bar appointment with the intent of having the screen replaced […previously, it’s only taken an hour], drop the boys off, drop the phone off at MOA Apple Store, then upstairs for the film.

Remarkably, that all went off without a hitch. I met with a technician at Apple and he suggested replacing the phone, to which I mentioned, I didn’t have a recent cloud backup. I told him that I intended to trade the phone in next week when the iPhone 11 Pro is released, and that I really just needed to survive a few more days. I signed a work order for a screen replacement, then went three floors up and met @vermillionfox in time for the trailers before It Chapter Two […which I thought was really good].

Downstairs, sent over to pick me phone up and the Genius Bar started with “…well, we didn’t have a successful repair on the screen, so we’re just going to give you a new phone. The previous technician stripped the screws.”. I already felt my chest tightening as I told him, I didn’t want a new phone. I wanted to take my old phone home to make a backup through iTunes, and it was then he took my original phone from a small box and powered it on to reveal a brand new Apple logo. You know what that means, and so did I.

Yes. They wiped it. Immediately, a flood of the things I just lost overcame me. Pictures from New Zealand and Australia, family and friends. All priceless, but the loss of price-centric information may be significant as well. All my Google Authenticator codes, specifically. I have backups of my QR’s, but many of them are years old. I’ll have to look for them. I tried to politely send @vermillionfox away so she didn’t have to witness me lacing in to the terrified boy trying to keep me calm.

I demanded to speak to a manager, and tried to compose myself in explaining how clear I made it that if anything beyond a screen replacement were to take place, not to do that. I said I’d be happy to bring the phone home, make a physical backup, and bring it in tomorrow. The thing that really sucks about a situation like this is, there’s nothing to say, really. I mean, it’s done. The damage is done and everything is gone. The closest we got to a resolution was offering to send the phone to a forensics recovery lab.

I did tell them to do that. The flash was erased and the OS was installed clean so I know there’s no chance of recovery. Maybe it’s just the smallest satisfaction that a trillion dollar company is spending money to “try”. It was a very helpless feeling. I acknowledged that neither the associate or manager did this, so I genuinely tried to not take it out on them, but I was furious. I drove home seething, going through my head how much is now lost forever. @vermillionfox called me and wanted to take me to dinner.

We met at Gorkha Palace. My favorite Indian restaurant and it did help. I’m trying to keep things in perspective. My last successful iCloud backup was June 19th, just before leaving for Australia and New Zealand […the last time the screen began to ghost and the device was replaced]. For the rest of the tonight, I’m going to try and just let it go. Try to not obsess over the situation. This was the only bad part of the day, but it was a seriously bad part.

End Steemit rant, I guess. I admit, it is nice to have a platform that I can come vent if I need to. It’s kind of just like screaming in to the void, but it’s therapeutic. A few close friends may say “Damn, @kommienezuspadt. That sucks!”, and I’ll accept the sympathy. Tomorrow I’m scheduled for some @coppercoins work with @ghostfish. I’m hoping that’ll keep me occupied. For now, I’m going to call it a night early. Getting off my soap box now. Good night.



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(Edited)

You should get compensation for your erased data, as you made it clear that all you wanted was a screen replacement. I say that’s worth $500 off the iPhone 11! Pictures are priceless though.

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I agree, @daveks, but that'll never happen. I decided to have them send the device to a data recovery service at their expense, but mostly because that was the only solution that made me feel like they're doing something [...and spending something] on the screw up.

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If you press the manager, I bet the will offer you something. I hope you can get that data back. I’ve always thought maybe Apple had your info on their cloud, even if you did not have a “back up”. That’s what I’ve thought, as I play with these devices day in day out.

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Oh shit. Oh shit, dude. @kommienezuspast that’s horrible. That’s a frikin nightmare. That’s worse than any monster clown with eerie balloons. I can’t even imagine being in your shoes and not going Jason Vorhees on the dude. Daaaamn. Last year I had an issue with my iPad in which, after a “restore to factory settings” situation (before which I had backed all my Procreate work to the cloud), I was told my back up wasn’t restoring properly. Meaning that even though I’d restored the cloud to the new iPad, my Procreate files weren’t there. I spent weeks restoring repeatedly and talking both with Apple support and then Procreate support. I was shitting bricks every which way, because I had backed it correctly to the cloud - and no, I hadn’t backed it to iTunes (which they kept asking), because why should I? Shouldn’t the cloud be good enough? I mean, isn’t that what I’m paying for? Anyway. At this point they always mumbled some nonsense and that was that. After about 20 days since my last unsuccessful restore (and after Procreate support told me to restore again for the nth time but to then leave my iPad and not touch anything) my files came back. Ever since, I back it up every way possible, and regularly. That was a nightmare month, yet it doesn’t compare to what you’re going through. So so sorry, man!

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Oh, @eyedrip! That exactly same thing happened to me with my iPad Pro when I first got it. Same thing. The restore happened and everything except Procreate installed. I waited three days and it was still stuck in loading. I finally got impatient and deleted it, and reinstalled it. I didn't see any of my Procreate files for a week. Just gone. I eventually did a clean install and got sidetracked with a lot of photography work and after almost two weeks of continuously downloading in the background, my Procreate files finally showed up again. I immediately copied all the files over to the Files app and DropBox, just to be safe. This situation really does suck. I feel like I did all the do diligence to make sure this didn't happen, and trusted Apple to do the same. They didn't. It's human error, but you can't really put a cost on what was lost with that mistake.

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Yup. We all make mistakes but unfortunately some have bigger repercussions than others. Hope your week picks up, man! Btw, finally got a chance to vote on your comic proposal. Can't wait for it to get more traction.

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Hello Lars, What a hard day for you when you have to lose important data from your cellphone. Moreover, the data has been stored for years and stores many memories. But however you must control your emotions, sir. anger will only make your blood pressure high and it's not good for your heart. I hope that everything will be resolved and everything will be normal again. Have a nice day, my friend.

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Man, I can't believe that happened... I worked at the Genius Bar for a little while, and it was always standard policy to make the customer push the factory reset on their phone so they knew exactly what they were doing and were responsible for the data. I can't imagine that policy has changed so that was a major screwup...

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Yeah, @bryan-imhoff. That's exactly what I was thinking and as I mentioned in the post, this if the FOURTH iPhone X that this issue came up. Two replacement phones and a screen replacement. Every time [...previous to this] I was the one that had to erase all settings and data. I had to physically push the button. I was blindsided and black out angry. It's at least some closure in hearing you say that so I know this was a horrible human error.

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Sorry to hear about your data loss. I hear more and more stories that the geniuses of Apple just don't seem to care about their customers and will do anything they can just to upsell you. I can understand why Huawei is such a threat.

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It really sucks, @ammonite. I'm still kind of dealing with it in my head. These things are becoming extensions of our lives and when giant 3 - 4 month blocks disappear, it feels as if they didn't happen. It's just really unfortunate that these last few months have included huge milestones for me.

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