The used phone I bought in Itaewon (the foreigner district) has been giving me sooo much trouble. Actually, the phone I bought was most probably stolen as the previous owner's numbers, messages, and even pictures were still on it! And when I accidently locked the keypad, the password was the previous owner's personal password as opposed to the general "0000" password. So a last week, I had to go to a really far service center to have my memory cleared. A whole other hassle of its own...

Furthermore, the battery doesn't last more than 8 hours, if that even, so it is completely useless (& quite dangerous) when I go out all day or out for at night with friends. Besides that, the camera doesn't even work. Not that I really care about that part..

So today, I went to go recharge my minutes so I could make more phone calls and I find out I cannot because the store owner I bought the phone from put me under a telephone service provider called KT as opposed to a cell phone service provider called KTF and so, to recharge my minutes, I have to go to KT stores which are far and uncommon in general.

At this point, I was so furious with the man who sold me this phone that I asked Jen and Sarah (two exchange students from Canada and America who speak fluent Korean) to come to the store with me pretending to be locals and tell the store owner (who is Pakistani) to give me a refund.

Since the owner can speak English, I told Jen and Sarah to let me talk to him in English first, and then they can throw in their Korean to really set the tone. So I walked in, put my phone and charger on the table and said "I want a refund. 40,000KRW for the phone and $5,000KRW for the charger". He had two other Pakistani kids in the store with him, they were probably about 25 years old, and they started snickering so I looked over at them and said "Stop laughing, this isn't funny". Then I told the owner very blatantly that he ripped me off; that the battery dies too quickly, the camera doesn't work, that it is too hard to recharge minutes. When I asked him where he got the phone from he said "Koreans come in and sell them to him". I told him that obviously this phone was stolen and I asked him if he just picked this one up off the street. Then I asked him if he had any children and if he would do this kind of thing to his own children. I told him again that the phone must have been stolen since all of the previous owner's information was still on it. He said nothing. He opened the register and gave me back my money. The entire time Sarah and Jen stood behind me with their hands crossed, staring.

Then he put the phone back on his shelf to resell to another victim.

Crooked, shady store.

This is one reason why I am NOT a fan of Itaewon.

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On a happier note, my parents are coming next week to visit me in Korea on their way to India! I'm really excited to show them Korea and what I have learned so far about this country, especially since they really enjoy traveling. And of course, I'm really excited to see them again! They'll also get to meet Oppa! Hahaha.