Refurbished life

When I showed up at the Verizon store last week desperate because my blackberry trackball had crapped out I was relieved that they were able to get my another BB8830 in my hands within minutes but as I walked out of the store an uneasiness came over me because I knew the abyss I had fallen into.

Yes they got me a different phone but what I knew in the back of my mind was that this was one of those refurbished jobs.   I have had a lot of experience with the refurbished cell-phone and much like a 70's porn-star it's gotten a lot of use and will never operate quite the same way it did when it came fresh out off the box.    Within 2 hours I noticed that the enter button didn't always take, by the end of the day I noticed that my text messages and BBM threads were getting erased periodically.  All of this was annoying but seemed manageable especially as I knew I'd only have to deal with the refurbished thing for only a few weeks as Verizon had just announced that they were releasing the Blackberry Tour in about two weeks.
Well of course this is where I jinxed myself as my phone went from spotty to all out terrible.   By Monday the enter button wouldn't work, on Tuesday emails were disappearing on me and on Wednesday the phone started turning off by itself.   It's like I had somehow gone from a normal business machines to one possessed by a ghost.   I would pick my phone up and it would be a white-screen with the little hour glass going and this would happened constantly, 10 to 15 times per day with increasing frequency.
   By the time I got to Thursday it was in a vicious cycle where it would freeze, reboot itself and then freeze.  As this viscous cycle was happening another vicious cycle restarted.   Me walking over to the Verizon Store complaining about my blackberry, them removing all the contacts and replacing it with a refurbished phone etc etc.   On my first real day off in months, I have to wake up at 8am to go to the Verizon store.
This is where I don't understand a company like Verizon who is so desperate to gain new and retain current customers.  Why in god's hell do you give people refurbished phones knowing they are only going to conk out on them.   I am completely convinced that some other schmo is walking around with the first one I returned last week today and wondering why the track-ball doesn't work and in a few days there will be another schmo who wonders why the phone he just got turns off all the time.    I know they don't do anything to these things in terms of real maintenance, yeah they probably blow some air into it and smack it on it's side like I use to do when the reception on our old black-and-white TV would go out but whatever routine tests they put it through are probably not more sophisticated than turning the phone on and off and seeing if BrickBreaker loads.
 
When you get a refurbished phone or any other electronic you are essentially agreeing to take on somebody else's problem.   You know that going into it that it can't possibly work that well if the thing works even 40% as well as a new one consider yourself lucky