I should have just gone to the Apple store in the first place...

Sarah updated her iPhone on Sunday but something happened while she was doing the update.  I'm not sure if the WiFi went out (sometimes it goes out randomly - thanks Spectrum!) or what but the phone did nothing for hours except say "Verifying Update".

We googled it and did what it said to do and the phone was unstuck and it appeared as if the phone was updated. Victory!

However, after using the phone for a bit she came back to tell us that it said "No Service" and she could only use the phone on wifi.

I did some more googling and we did a couple of other things: we toggled airplane mode on and off, we checked to make sure it was updated to the latest update, we did a hard reboot, and nothing.

Dan left for his trip and I forgot about the issue.

She got home from school on Monday and said the phone was still messed up she tried a few things to no avail.  I just tried to ignore the whole thing.  I hate techy things and knew that this wasn't going to end well. We are getting the kids new phones for Christmas and I really didn't want to have to deal with any phone issues until then.

She said she was fine using the phone only on wifi until then. And since she is rarely anywhere without WiFi I was fine with that too.  (I've mentioned before I'm lazy - further proof!)

But yesterday she realized that she had a field trip today and she didn't want to be gone all day without access to her phone.  I didn't like the thought of that either and also, we discovered that even on wife she could only text her friends that had iPhones.  People like me, with an android, weren't getting her texts and she wasn't receiving any I sent. 

So last night  did all the things we had done previously and then googled some more and did what was recommended: checking for a cellular update, removing and reinserting the SIM card, and attempting to reset network settings among other things.  But nothing changed.  The phone still showed no service. 

Finally I contacted Apple Care.  I spoke to a very nice older gentleman who while kind, wasn't super helpful. (At one point I think he even used the phrase "gee whiz")  I told told him everything I had already done and he was like, "Wow!  You've done all the things I was going to have you do." 

We determined that even though it was showing it had been updated to iOS 13 that it most likely got disconnected from the wifi and got stuck and wasn't fully updated. So he sent me an email with a link to redo the system update and we said our goodbyes.

Then Sarah and I attempted to do that and it didn't work.  So once that didn't work we ended up trying to just restore to an old version.  But the last time she backed up her phone was a year ago.  She wasn't excited about that be we decided that was better than nothing.

Anyway, after doing the restore we got a message that the phone needed to be activated so we attempted to activate it.  BUT - it locked up and wouldn't let us do anything.

So I called back and got a very helpful woman.  We hooked Sarah's phone up to iTunes to try to do the same thing the first guy wanted us to do. She walked us through step by step so I know we were doing it correctly but with the exact same result.

She put us on hold for a long time while she spoke to senior tech.  Then he got on the phone with us and asked us if there was any writing on the back of her phone under the Apple logo.  There was so I read it off to him - a bunch of numbers and letters.

When I was done he said that her iPhone 7 was one of a very small number of 7s that has a weird glitch and won't work after attempting the iOS 13 update.

So he told us we could take it the Apple store in Greensboro - which is 45 minutes from here or to the Best Buy in Winston-Salem which is less than 20 minutes from here.

But as soon as he said Best Buy I remembered that over the summer I tried to take Sarah's phone there to get a new battery.  Her phone (Peter's too) were losing their charge pretty quickly so that by the middle of the day they were down to zero.  I thought it would be a cheap solution to get a new battery for each phone and see if we could extend the life of these phones for another year or so.

HA! Wishful thinking!

Sarah's phone has the tiniest crack in the glass.  It's on the side of the phone so it doesn't impact the view on the screen at all but apparently when they replace the battery they put a powerful suction cup on the screen to open up the phone and the slightest crack would cause the screen to shatter.

The kind folks at Best Buy informed us that we would need to replace the screen for $149 AND pay for a new battery and service fees and suddenly my cheap fix wasn't so cheap.  Especially when the trade in value for a 7 is oddly enough - exactly $149. So we didn't go that route.

But here we are and the Apple guy said we would need to fix the screen before they could fix the issue.

I told him that it didn't seem right that we had to pay $149 to fix a screen that otherwise isn't an issue to fix an issue that Apple forced on us with their bad update.  (Go ahead an google iOS 13 update and see all the issues.)

He put me on hold for a while and came back and said he had it approved that Apple would pay the $149 but I would have to go to the Apple store for the repair.

I have an appointment but it isn't until tomorrow so Sarah will be without a phone for at least two days.  I warned her it might be longer.  My appointment on Thursday isn't until 12:45 and I have to be back at school by 3:30 to take her to swim practice so if they can't get it done quickly (and I seriously doubt they will be able to) I will probably have to leave it with them and get it back on Friday.

So potentially 3 days without a cell phone has her feeling like a pioneer woman.  This morning as she was leaving for school she said, "I'm living on the grid!" which made me chuckle.

I got the cell phone number of one of her friends that will be on the field trip with her so if I need to get in touch with her I will contact her friend.  And if she needs me she will use her friend's phone.  So, technically, she's not too far off the grid. ;)

And might I add, all of that talking with Apple took THREE HOURS!  I didn't get to be until almost Midnight.  Cup of coffee number three - here I come!

(One funny from the phone call with the woman at Apple:  When I mentioned that the phone had not been backed up since October of last year, she told Sarah that she really needed to back up her phone more regularly.  (we were on speaker) Sarah rolled her eyes.  I laughed and told the lady that Sarah just rolled her eyes at her and she laughed too.  She informed me that she has three kids, one of which is a 15-year-old daughter and she was used to all the eye-rolling. ) Solidarity Apple lady.  Solidarity.