My mother lost her cell phone recently. So, she needed a new phone. I thought she should get something that gave her instant access to email since many of her friends were on email and it would be nice for her to get hooked to email too. She has an email address but you know how it is with some people, right? Send them an email and then call them and tell them you've sent an email! Heck, you might as well tell them the content as well on the phone! My mother is like that. She rarely checks her email but she proudly goes about giving her email address to everyone.

So, I thought we should get her a phone that will give her instant email access. That narrowed the choice to two phones - an iPhone and a Blackberry. Now, under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have thought twice about this and straightaway gone for the iPhone which is a far superior product than anything out there (BB, Android, Nokia, Galaxy something). But it was far beyond our budget at this point. Even the iPhone 3GS at Rs. 20,000 seemed too high.

At this point, one fine day, my mother got an SMS from an unknown number saying that they were selling the Blackberry Storm 9530 for Rs. 9,999 and that the phone was actually worth more than Rs. 26,000. My mother forwarded the SMS to me. If I was interested I was supposed to send an SMS to some number. I did that. No harm in checking what it was all about!

A little later I got a call from someone asking if I was interested in the phone. I had looked up the features and it had what we needed. It may not be the best Blackberry model available. But it had what we needed. The guy on the call was a typical call center sales executive. Heavily accented voice. Full of enthusiasm. Making promises like nobody's business.

The model that they had messaged about did not have a physical keyboard. I asked for a model that did. He suggested the Tour 9630 which had all the features of the 9530 but had a physical keyboard. I asked him if it was locked to any provider. He said no. I asked him about warranty and service. He said we just had to call a number and someone would come and collect the phone in 48 hours and then have it repaired or whatever was needed. I then said I needed some time to think. He asked me to place the order. When the order was ready, I would get a call and I could say I did not want it. Fair enough. I confirmed the order.

After ten days I got a call asking about the order. I asked them to deliver it. The next day the parcel came. I paid the cash and took the phone. I opened the box and everything seemed all right. It was a sealed box. I opened the covers and then put the battery in. the display said 'Insert sim". I took my mother's sim and then opened the back and tried to figure out where and how I could insert the sim. Believe me, inserting a sim and removing it is such a difficult thing in this model (may be other models too?), that I rued the minute I ordered this phone. The worst however was yet to come.

Even after managing to insert the sim, the phone continued to say "Insert sim". I removed the sim and put it back again. Restarted the phone. Still the same. I put in my sim thinking may be the sim has a probably. Same thing.

I called the number I had for customer care. Some weirdo answered and gave me the typical bull shit that call center executives are trained to give. Try this. Try that. Restart. Sit on it. Throw it up in the air and try catching it. Then they say they will make a request for replacement. And how will they replace it, I asked. They asked me to courier the instrument to their address. Yeah right! They send me a defective piece and I have to courier it to them?

I looked up the internet for this problem and now think that they have sent me a locked phone. I get the Verizon logo while shutting and starting it up. So, it is either a locked phone or a defective one.

I now feel I should have gone for the iPhone 3GS. There are no free lunches in this world. If you pay less, you get less. It is as simple as that!