I, like many (most?) women, carried a purse for years and years. Sometime in the last years, I was given one of those little pouches you can stick to the phone that you can use to carry your driver’s license, a debit card, or whatever. During the Covid, I hardly went anywhere. When I did, I just took the phone with my NCDL and debit card. I realized I didn’t really need all the other stuff I was carrying around. Or at least, not often. Essentially, I stopped carrying a purse and generally put my phone in one of my back pants pockets.
Over a pretty short period of time, putting the phone in the back pocket became one of those mindless habits that you don’t even think about. It’s such a mindless habit that I often don’t remember doing it.
Before I continue, I need to explain a couple of things.
1. For certain activities in the states, I need to have a US phone number.
2. When we got to Portugal, we needed Portuguese phone numbers. Thanks to the magic support of dual sim cards, I was able to get an eSim for the Portuguese number and can switch between the 2 phone numbers as needed. The sim-world is not something I know a lot about, sadly.
3. We had to get Scott a new phone. It supports his US and Portuguese phone numbers.
4. All of this US/PT stuff was initially set up by Ana. Ana speaks great English and must have worked for MEO for a long time because she’s extremely knowledgeable.
Wednesday night (Feb 5th) we went to the Meet up here in Faro at the Columbus. It ended later than usual. I got us an Uber to take us home. It arrived quickly and it’s a short jaunt so we were home quickly, too.
At some point I decided I wanted to look at my phone. My phone. Hmm. Not in my back pocket. Not in my jacket pocket. WTF? Shit! It must have come out of my pocket in the Uber. I KNOW I had it in the car because I was watching it for when he would arrive and to see what color and kind of car and what the license plate number was.
I went to Uber on my laptop. They have a support area where you can select that you left something in a car. I had a lot of back and forth with the pathetic Uber “Support”. No luck with actually getting the phone back. I’m assuming at this point that some unscrupulous passenger found and kept it. It pains me to say that my NC drivers license and at least 2 credit or debit cards were in the little pouchy thing.
I used Find My Device the next day and Scott went to look for it where it said it was. No dice.
My life was in that phone. I went to the MEO store yesterday to get another phone. I lost my contacts, all previous messages/texts, everything. Only the photos that are in Google's cloud are untouched. I’ll have to reinstall quite a few apps.
By the way, I took the bus to the mall. Actually, I didn’t get off where I should have and rode until it came back around to there. That didn’t take long, so I felt some satisfaction that I “successfully” got somewhere on the local bus.
At the MEO store, like most places in Portugal, you take a number and wait your turn. I got a very nice young man, Julian. His English was only somewhat better than my Portuguese. But we managed to select a phone. He kinda sorta understood what I explained about the US phone number. However, since that is all to do with AT&T, he couldn’t do anything other than make sure the phone was capable having 2 different phone numbers. See, initially, we were working with the phone I brought with me from the US. They just had to add the second sim. AAAACKCK!
After a lot of time and some shenanigans with one of the other people working there. I left with what seemed to be a working mobile phone. Julian sent himself a text message from the phone and pronounced it working.
What happened next is pretty muddled in my mind, but I’ll do my best to relate it. It had started raining and gotten kinda cold while I was in the store. Thinking I’ll never use Uber again, I tried to install Bolt (kinda like Lyft). I was having some trouble with that (remember that some cards were with my lost phone). Bolt kept telling me it was sending me a verification code. I wasn’t getting anything from them. I tried texting Leslie just to verify text really was working. No response. I texted Scott. No response. I concluded that apparently, I could send text messages but not receive them??
I went back to the store, took a number and got a different person. Her English was fine and she quickly determined that the phone was not using SMS for texting, but was using “the internet”. Uh. WHAT? I just went with it at this point. She made that change, sent herself a text and pronounced it fixed. I left and started trying Bolt again. Have I mentioned that there are NO PLACES TO JUST SIT DOWN IN THIS MALL? I sat on the floor, I went back to Starbucks (where the rain had gotten everything wet). ACKKKKK!
So I still am not getting texts from Bolt. I decide I’m gonna have to use Uber one more time. Uh. No. Not working either. I tried texting Scott again. I finally noticed that my messages to Scott looked like they were going through twice. THEN I realized that I was sending texts to MYSELF. That meant that Scott’s Portuguese phone number had been assigned to my phone instead of MY number.
How the hell could that happen, you may wonder. When we started the conversation, Julian asked me for my NIF. Just FYI, the NIF has something to do with taxes, but isn’t something to be guarded like our SSNs. We had to get NIFs to open our Portuguese bank account. Anyway, he found me in their system with that, and, I guess, failed to notice that there were TWO phones on the account.
I think you can imagine just how close I was to COMPLETELY LOSING MY SHIT.
Back I go to the freaking store. I take a number. My number is called and I get the guy who should not have a public-facing job. Oh sweet holy Moses, Ana is at work now! Jerk-guy, is being a jerk and I mention Ana. He says if I want to have Ana help me that is fine. Go sit back down and wait.
Oh Ana! Ana! She remembered all the previous stuff she and I had gone through. She quickly grasped what had happened. She fixed it YEAH! But… Now Scott’s phone is essentially disabled. We need to physically bring it to the store so she can fix that. FUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKK! She said she would be there Saturday (now today) starting at 10am. I said we’d come then and asked her if I could bring her a latte or something. She said, IF I wanted to, she’d prefer a Pastel de nata. See previous post about pastries.
OK. I still had to use Uber instead of Bolt, which really chapped my ass, but at least I MADE IT HOME to my husband and dogs!
This morning Scott and I took the bus to the mall. We found the coffeeshop with the pastries Ana likes. I bought 6 of them, they were still warm. Scott got a croissant, and we shared some coffee.
We go to the MEO store. I ask for Ana. Oh something happened and she isn’t coming in until 2pm. I guess I was just numb at this point. But Excuse ME? She told me she was coming in at 10. I’ll be damned if I’m coming back at 2. So the other chick who helped some yesterday is game to get into this. She was able to understand about the 2 numbers on my account. She did whatever it is they do, and my phone seemed to have the correct number and so did Scott’s. In the meantime I got a text from Ana, saying she’d be in at 11:00am. Oh hell to the no. We seem to be back in business, so we walk home.
My US phone number is tied to many, many things. Right at this moment, I have no way to fix it all or even know what is broken. I think I can still get WhatsApp messages and calls on my laptop. If you need to reach me, for now, please use that.
If you’re a person who prays, please pray for me!
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