Verizon finally gets it right...Kind of.

After a successful resolution from the Verizon store in Walnut Creek, I was satisfied with the state of my Droid. The battery door stayed in place, and would hang on for the life of it.

Sadly, that state of euphoria didn't last long at all, as my Droid began having severe network issues, and the door began falling off the back again. This was on Christmas day. I was also at my girlfriend's for Christmas.

I pick up my Droid and dial up Verizon, who amazingly is open for Christmas, and I get a rep who actually seems like he's going to help me out. I describe what I've done to him, including re-actviating my phone, updating my roaming settings, etc.

Having seen all the notes on my account, he just instantly relents and sends me a new phone. I interrupt him and tell him he needs a different address to send it to, since my shipping address is different from my billing address. No problem, it'll all be fine.

That is, until I get two shipping notifications in my inbox. Maybe they're just sending me something to compensate for the problems.

That is, until I realized that they sent me TWO Droids. One to my billing address, and one to my shipping address. How did I know? I went to the FedEx shipping center in Pacheco, CA to grab the one package that I wasn't home for.

Unboxed it in the car, and that was one of the Droids. Then I went to the PO Box where my billing address is to retrieve the package sitting there. Unboxed that, too, and it was another Droid.

I dialed up Verizon to make sure they wern't about to charge me for this extra phone. The guy on the other end took down the MEID HEX of the extra Droid and noted that I was going to return that one.

I let my girlfriend pick the one I should take before that, though, and she ended up siding with a good one. The battery door hangs on for dear life, actually lines up with the casing, and doesn't royally fuck up software-wise like my other Droid did.

Now, to just take both of these FedEx packages back to a FedEx store...

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Endnote: I suppose things like this would be okay if Verizon didn't try to act like the gatekeeper for phone support, or drop the ball so damned frequently.

It really sucks that Verizon doesn't have replacement phone SKUs at the retail stores, because if your phone is seriously hosed and you need a replacement *right now*, you're out of luck. All they have are retail SKUs, which CANNOT be used for replacing phones.

In contrast to Apple Stores (yeah, I'm going to compare the Droid to the iPhone, because Verizon markets the Droid as an iPhone killer), where Apple has loads of bare iPhones for replacement purposes.

Hell, even MetroPCS (a local, regional carrier with GREAT customer service) acts as the gatekeeper for phone support *and* manages to do it right. (They have replacement phone SKUs in store.)

Maybe I'm just being a nitpicky bitch because of the excellent service that Apple showed me while I was using an iPhone 3GS.