Yeah, I'm the dumb one.

Ok. A couple of days ago my cell phone died. While this is upsetting in and of itself, because it is only a year and a half old, it was very expensive (as any device that is both a cell and a pda is).

So. I look up the hours for the sprint store near my house. 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Excellent. I motor over there and arrive at 8:02 p.m. Closed. Apparently, the store hours are different than on the website. Nice.

Yesterday at work, I notice the Sprint Website says there's one right near my work. And only like 3 minutes away. Perfect. Drive there following directions. I end up at a Verizon store? This isn't right is it? Call the store, the directions they gave me on the site WERE WRONG. Had to double back and go the other way.

So...I get to the store...Sign up on the waiting list (! Who knew they had these at the phone store??) And wait. Luckily, only like 5 minutes.

I explain to the guy I don't want to spend $500, but would like something with

camera

address book

calendar

So he takes me to the Treo 650. Which is like $600. Um, no.

Got anything else?

So he shows me a decent phone. I ask how one gets the addresses from, say Outlook, onto the phone. He says it comes w/a USB cable. I say, um, ok, but HOW does it do that? What is their syncing software (like Palm OS uses HotSync)? He says there is NO software. You just hook it up and it knows. I am not a moron. I know there is more to it than that. We argue this point for a while.

So I start playing w/the phone. Goto Contacts. Do "add contact". See that you can store name/email/phone numbers of people. Ask where you put the addresses. He doesn't know. The answer, is NO WHERE. Hmmm. So this is what magically syncs w/outlook? Don't think so pal.

So I left.

It really upsets me when sales people (always men so far in my experience) think I don't know anything because I'm female. Please. As my husband says I should've knocked him down a peg or two then spoken to the manager. But I can't think of anyway to do that and not sound like I'm pouting. So I just told hubby today to go get me a phone.

The same damn thing happened when I graduated college and went to get my first new car, a Camaro Z28. I went, ready to pay cash for my car and couldn't get the sales men to deal w/me. They thought I would think paying STICKER for a demo car with 5,000 miles was reasonable. I had to send my Dad to go buy it (from somewhere else) for me.

Any suggestions?