An iPhone story

[elchivito]

So I decided to join the 21st century. I'd been thinking about getting a smart phone for a while as a way to keep connected with my son as he doesn't check email and rarely actually answers his cell phone with his voice. If you want to talk to the young these days, you text.
His birthday is coming up and he said he'd like to upgrade his old iPhone 3GS to something better, a 4S maybe. He uses prepaid with TMobile as we are all of one mind in this family: contracts are for suckers.
So I start looking at iPhones on Craigslist and discover a heretofore unknown to me world of scammers and lowlifes.
Finally I find an ad that has TWO current model iPhones for sale for 350 bucks total. A 32gig 5S and a 16gig 5C. The 5c has a cracked screen. I call. "Are they unlocked I say and can you prove it?" Nice lady says we are new employees at NAU and got phone service through the university but it's Verizon and we can't use our GSM phones. We've paid off our old ATT contract and we're waiting for verification of unlock." I say OK, call me when you have the confirmation. She says OK. I don't expect to here from her based on the other scumbags I've been dealing with on Cl. In a couple of days she calls. They're unlocked and ready to go, I printed the emails for you if you're still interested. Meantime I had checked with a 3rd party Apple repair shop and got a quote of 129 dollars to fix the 5C screen with an assurance that they were genuine apple parts including the Retina display. So we go see the phones. The 5S is gorgeous, not a mark on it. The 5C works fine too but has a vertical crack in the screen. I tell the nice new professor lady how much it'll cost to repair the screen and she says "oh my goodness, well if you want them both how about 300 dollars?" I had checked the prices for new unlocked versions of these phones with apple and the two together would cost a good ways north of a thousand dollars, so 300 is basically free. I bought them on the spot.
Sonny boy, happy as a pig in shlt pops his Tmobile sim into the 5S and is hooked up in a heartbeat. I packaged the 5C and sent it off to Tempe to the Apple Exchange for a screen repair while waiting for my TMobile sim to arrive. A day or two later the Apple Exchange calls and says we have your phone but it won't power up and we can't replace the screen and are sending it back.
When the phone got back sure enough it appeared to have been damaged in the mail. I had bought insurance on it for 300 dollars. I called AppleCare as it was still under warranty. The guy says "There is no such thing as genuine apple parts used in iPhone repairs by anybody. That business is lying to you and so is anyone else who claims to repair iPhones with Apple parts. We don't repair phones. If your phone needs repair we send you a new one. We can send you a new one for 269 dollars. So a couple of days later a prepaid FedEx arrives with a brand new 5C, and I get email confirmation from the USPS that my insurance claim has been approved and a check will be issued within 48 hours. So I have a brand spanking new iPhone 5C for a hundred bucks, junior has a pristine 5S for 200, and we're both paying 40 bucks a month to TMobile for unlimited talk and text and 500Mb of data a month.
Sometimes you get lucky.