Here's another 'senior citizen' story. My husband dropped his Iphone6 in the toilet. Thankfully, clean water. Rescued it and took the dessicant (SP?) from my hearing device dehumidifier out and put it in a zip lock bag with the phone. The next morning the phone would turn on, but would not receive calls, nor could he use any of the apps. We figured it was dead. Took to Verizon, where we sat on a bench for nearly an hour before one of the 5 sales people there could help us. Amazing that some were helping a single customer that entire time. (Looked more like courtship in one case.) When a sales guy finally came to help us he took one look at the phone and said it was probably damaged beyond repair. He offered John an 'inexpensive' new iPhone option for $450 to replace it. Together we decided to check with our daughter and family to see if they had an older phone he could have reconfigured, so we walked out of Verizon while telling them we were going to check with family about a used phone. (KIds replace the dang things pretty often.) The Verizon guy did tell us they would reconfigure a used one if we could find one. No cost estimate, but guessing it would be a few bucks.

Long story short: Took the phone to our son in law, who is tech savvy. He had a used phone to give us, but it ended up it was not needed. He did a few things, including removing the back of the phone, which had also been in an Otter Box which we had removed. Pushed a few buttons and made a phone call. The phone worked perfectly. So no need for a new one or a refurbished old one.

We were so happy we were not suckered in to buying a new phone that day. I do think that seniors often get that kind of treatment. And the reality is; few of us are savvy like the young folks are. Those sales folks probably want to avoid us when we arrive in the first place. We're living in a crazy world.