Joe Zimmerman

For the last year I’ve been swearing by Verizon’s Backup Assistant. I would say things like, “Check this! Verizon’s Backup Assistant, automatically backs up all your contacts each night, and stores them online, so if you ever lose your phone, you’ll still have your contacts!”

Well, please let me rescind my testimonial. Three days ago, all of the contacts in my new Droid “Incredible” disappeared, and when I went to a Verizon store to have them retrieved, the customer service lady goes, “I’m sorry, you have no numbers backed up. It appears you must have pressed a button that erased all your contacts, and then the Backup assistant backed that up.”

“Really? There’s nowhere to retrieve what it backed up yesterday?”

“So-rrry,” she said, with a head tilt that is really saying, “There’s nothing more I can do, so don’t be mad at me, but please go away.”

So let me get this straight. I’ve been paying for backup assistant, which is a program that backs up your contacts. But, if you lose all your contacts, it backs up your new lack of contacts? It immediately disregards the fact that you had 600 the day before? That’s not exactly “backup” or “assistance.” Guess what? I don’t need help remembering ZERO. I can handle NOTHING!

I also love how the lady just assumes it was my fault, when she said “you must have pressed a button.” Yeah, it couldn’t possibly have been some glitch in the new Droid “Incredible” (a phone that is having numerous glitch issues). I must have clicked some button!

First of all, I did not press a “button” that deleted all of my contacts. Secondly, if there is such a button that just deletes ALL of your contacts, shouldn’t there also be a follow up question that asks, “Are you SURE you want to do delete all of your contacts?” Then if you click “yes,” shouldn’t there be a second follow-up that says, “Wow, that’s a lot of contacts you’re about to delete! You must either be a new customer with an old phone, or a criminal who stole this phone!” And then if you hit “yes” again, I guess you deserve to lose all of your contacts.

“Oh yes, we can put your entire life right at your fingertips with this new incredible smart phone What’s that, it malfunctioned? So so-rr-rr-rr-y. You must have pressed the bad button.”

The one saving grace is, I had Kris Angel’s number in my notebook. So Kris, hear me loud and clear: if you were the one who was magically responsible for this disappearance, don’t think this is over (*whisper* “Are you ready?”).