billcummings wrote:I suspect collusion of course but that's just me.
Not just you. If someone can figure out a way to gain greater control, there's a good chance they will do it.
Just tonight, for example, I was forced to get a new "SIM" card for my cell phone with no good explanation. Here's how it went ...
About 2 weeks ago my "smart phone" power button began to malfunction. So I immediately took an old phone to Verizon to ask them to switch to the old phone. They did it, and all was well. Since then, I've done some "working" with the malfunctioning switch, and I think I've got it functioning again. So I took the two phones back to Verizon to get them switched back (my old phone is 10 years old and has very limited capability). The woman at the counter told me that she couldn't just switch them back without giving me a new SIM card (Subscriber Information Module?). I told her that the one I had been using was working just fine before the switch - only 2 weeks ago - and I wanted to know why a new card was needed. She emphatically insisted that the old card could not possibly work. She did agree that if I'd never taken the new phone out of service it would still work, but she insisted that just taking it out of service somehow made the old SIM card inoperable. Now I can understand that there might be some policy reason for requiring a new SIM card. Maybe they have to permanently deactivate the old ones to prevent some nefarious use. But that's all she needed to tell me. I can understand a policy decision like that, but I could not accept her telling me that it "just wouldn't work".
Along the lines of your comment, I suspect there's more going on here than meets the eye. Maybe the new card has a new capability (or control?) built into it that's not in the old one. Otherwise, why not just reactivate the one that was working 2 weeks ago?
Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2014 7:40 pm