Today probably is not my day. I dropped my phone on the ground when I was rushing to my first recitation. The screen was completely shattered into pieces. And I had no time to mourn the loss of my first smartphone because I had to arrive in the classroom on time.

In the afternoon, I tried getting help at the Apple store. Unfortunately, they told me I would have to pay over 200 dollars for a replacement phone. As I was hesitating whether to accept this offer, they informed me they could do nothing with the device since it was purchased outside the country. I left the Apple store with only the Apple Care phone number.

I then made my second attempt. The customer service representative, Jeremy, put me on hold for about 10 minutes because my case was rare and he needed help from a senior advisor. Initially, he said I would probably need to send my phone back to China to get it fixed and then have it sent back. He transferred me to customer service in China. After listening to about 10 minutes of enjoyable pop music with no one answering the call, Jeremy told me he had been searching for an alternative solution so I wouldn’t have to go through the procedure in China.

Finally, he transferred me to a senior advisor named Diego, who found a new policy for devices purchased abroad that seemed perfect for me. He charged me 99 dollars to upgrade my phone with Apple Care, which would cover two incidents with a 49-dollar extra charge each time. The only downside was that I received a new iPhone 5 locked to the AT&T network instead of a factory unlocked one. Overall, I think it was a good deal because it was cheaper and provided more protection.

In the evening, I returned to the Apple store and had my phone replaced with a new one. Though I don’t know why it took them about an hour to complete the process, it was finally fixed.

Lesson learned: Buy a case. Just in case.