Verizon sucks big hairy monkey’s butt.

I had a battery ordered from an eBay store to replace the dying one I had on my cell now, and I figured it was safe enough because the seller had a near perfect rating from thousands of buyers. Otherwise I’d have to get it from Verizon, which charges a hefty 40 bucks for the same battery (WT*??) This way I was getting it for just 10.

Battery fried my phone. I don’t mean it simply didn’t work: it @#$% NUKED MY PHONE. When I put the original battery back in, it kept giving the error message “Use Genuine Battery,” and then it would power back down. I found out later on that Verizon’s LG line of phones uses a chip in their batteries to prevent customers from purchasing cheaper batteries from third party dealers. Well, isn’t that just lovely?

I took my phone to a service center hoping they could fix the problem. A battery swap didn’t work, so they held onto the phone to see if it could be fixed (maybe by resetting the software). I came back and the Verizon guy simply dropped a crappy replacement phone in my hands, along with a receipt to sign for it.

“Dude, the hell is this? Where’s my phone?”

“Oh, we couldn’t repair it, so we’re giving you a replacement phone.”

I looked at the phone. It had scratch marks all over the screen and looked like it had been used for years.

“This phone isn’t new. I want my old phone back. What about all the contacts and pictures I had on it? That all goes poof, just like that??”

A shrug of the shoulders.

“And this phone is refurbished for crying out loud.”

“No, it’s straight from LG.”

?????

“Yeah, and? It’s still refurbished… you know what, forget it, just give me my old phone back.”

Great service, huh? I decided to try my luck at another service center tomorrow. I have a suspicion they just took the phone, threw it in a drawer, and unwrapped a replacement phone for me without even taking a look at it. I’m hoping another service center might actually try to repair it, or at least give me a better phone.

Even though it really isn’t that big a loss (I could recover my contact list easily enough), the whole thing really chapped my ass for some reason. Maybe it’s the gall of them trying to force me to buy a proprietary battery over three times it’s actual cost. Maybe it’s because I was just having a generally bad day. Or maybe I just hadn’t eaten enough for the day. Or maybe all three.

Update: Since a few visitors are coming here looking for info on the “use genuine battery” message, I should note that if you swap the battery and it still doesn’t work, that message really means, “I’m broken, I need to be replaced, and if your warranty ran out, well too bad for you.” Ironically enough, after I got a replacement phone (with a few days to spare on the warranty), I also got a replacement for the battery that originally fried my old phone, and this one worked perfectly. Go figure. Long story short, if you want to try a third party battery to save money, make sure you back up your contacts, and make sure the phone is still under warranty. Otherwise you’ll be playing Russian Roulette with your cell. Before you do something like that, ask yourself: Do I feel lucky?