Remember that gift card I won?

Remember when Alabama Slacker Mama {aka: Robin} gave away a $50 Visa gift card and (so surprisingly!) I won? : ) I told you all about it here. Well, I want to fill you guys in on what I did with that 'fun money'!

First of all, my iPhone was dying a slow and painful death. (Painful for me, that is.) I was constantly having to ask the person on the other end of the line to SPEAK UP, and most of the time incoming calls didn't even register, let alone come through for me to answer. There were black lines developing across the screen and it was sssssslllllllllooooooooowwwwwww. Slower than molasses in January, to be precise.

Then came the AT&T commercial offering the iPhone 3GS for $49. (With a 2 year contract renewal...fine print, ya know. Not a problem, since I didn't plan to leave AT&T anyway.) Now I just had to make sure my original rate plan would be grandfathered in as promised. I spoke to folks at two different AT&T stores and was assured it would be. You see, I once received a bill in excess of $700 when they 'accidentally' messed up my plan. Can't have that happening again. Heart attacks are ugly and expensive.

So I took that gift card and bought myself a new iPhone, just like this one!

I was such a happy girl! :)

Came home, synced my iTunes and got my music reloaded, plus all my apps. (Just a couple of hours and already I was desperate for my ESPN ScoreCenter app. Yankees withdrawal is also an ugly thing.) Everything went so smoothly! I felt like joining Snoopy in a happy dance!

It all just seemed too good to be true!

So of course you know this means it was too good to be true.

I checked out my account online and discovered that not only were they charging me more than my old plan, they had also taken away my texting.

I. WAS. TICKED.

Though I was promised that nothing would change, it seems that little promise didn't include my texts. Texts are no longer included in any of AT&T's plans. They're always an add-on. Apparently even when you ask specifically if anything at all will change when you upgrade phones but wish to grandfather in your current plan, texts don't count.

I. WAS. SUPER. TICKED.

Then my techno-guru (that would be Brie) made some phone calls and fixed it up, almost good as new. It ends up that the only way I could get back my texts without raising my monthly bill was to return my new phone and reactivate my old one. (Out of the question, since it was on its deathbed.) So I'd have to put on my big girl panties and deal with no texts.

Texts are such handy things. This made me sad. :(

For all the trouble they'd caused, they did credit my account with $25. That was nice.

But I still wanted my texts back.

Then we found out that the old plan I had argued to have grandfathered was actually $5 more expensive than the current offering.

Are you kiddin' me?

And then we discovered that being an employee of the company for which The Hubster works gets us an additional discount.


And...

Adding 1000 texts is only $10.

Yeah, baby!

Now, this is me:

So all's well that ends well, I suppose. THANK YOU AGAIN, ROBIN! I am now totally techno for an old grandma! ; )