‘I need a new smartphone! My old one, uh, broke’

Join in if you know the words: Users lust after the bleeding edge of technological coolness; companies want to wait until a new technology has proven itself and the current hardware dies of old age before upgrading. Meanwhile, IT pros must manage the middle ground between them. In the days before “BYOD” and “consumerization of IT” became catchphrases, a bout of tech envy swept through my workplace and made otherwise sane employees do stupid things, while taking the bean counters by surprise.

I worked at a large enterprise where all salespeople and managers had company-issued BlackBerrys, the old blue model that was so huge it barely fit in a person’s pocket. The devices had no special features at all. They did email and phone — period.

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To the bean counters’ delight and the employees’ angst, these models were also tanks. They very seldom died of natural causes, usually meeting their demise by theft or negligence — say, drowning. The employee would receive a replacement device that was the same model. Overall, we didn’t have to replace the PDAs very often.

The company had been using a more expensive yet reliable carrier for cellular service, and signal issues were rare in the city. But as technology improved, the company explored ways to decrease expenses.

In time, the company switched to a low-cost, bottom-of-the-barrel cellular carrier to provide service for all new BlackBerry lines. Since the director of IT wasn’t sure how well the new carrier would work out and an expense was involved in the transition of each line, we made the switch on an as-needed basis, seeding the environment with guinea pigs. If the new carrier worked out well, then we would proceed with a full-scale rollout.

The users set up on the new carrier were all new hires, as well as anyone needing a replacement BlackBerry; at first, only a couple of employees fit the latter category. All requests were to be routed through the purchasing department. However, those planning the switch had either overlooked or underestimated one little detail: tech envy.

Here’s where it got complicated. Employees placed on the cheaper carrier received a brand-new, awesome-looking compact BlackBerry Curve that could browse the Internet, play MP3s and videos, and even had a camera. (Cue angels singing.)

A newly hired manager was the first to receive one of the new BlackBerrys. Instantly, other users started to drool. They wanted it. Badly.

Within the first month of working with the new carrier, there was an explosion of mysterious BlackBerry “issues.” Like pill addicts lining up at a pain clinic, people showed up at the IT department with their old BlackBerrys, complaining of vague problems.

“It’s so slow — it takes forever for my email to come through.”

“I drop calls all the time.”

“The battery doesn’t last very long.”

“The sound quality is horrible.”

Forget troubleshooting efforts, though — they soon revealed what they were really after. “Can I get one of those new BlackBerrys?”

The IT department would log our observations and send the report to the purchasing department. The user’s request was approved if their complaints were legitimate — some of the 4-year-old BlackBerrys actually had issues. However, if the user couldn’t make a good enough case, their request was denied, forcing them to play hardball to get their precious smartphone.

“Yeah, I dropped my BlackBerry in a glass of iced tea, and it doesn’t work anymore. Can I have a new one?”

“I accidentally ran over my BlackBerry with the lawn mower and now it doesn’t work. Can I have a new one?”

One device looked like the user had deliberately smashed it with a hammer: “I accidentally dropped it. Can I have a new one?”

Such blatant scheming and destruction took the purchasing department by surprise. At the same time, users needed a functioning device, so at first their requests were granted. The purchasing department started planning its own counterattack, but the situation worked itself out soon enough.

To put it succinctly, the new carrier sucked rotten eggs. Despite the optimistic coverage maps, even right in the middle of the city their service was horrible. Rooms in the building where the old carrier worked fine were now dead zones. Salespeople in the field had to drive miles out of their way to get a signal.

En masse, users quickly realized they had made a horrible mistake and begged IT to be switched back to the old carrier. This involved an early termination fee, plus the expense of setting up a new line and new device with the old carrier — entailing about $500 for each person.

Low-level managers who couldn’t make a good enough case for switching back had to deal with the inconvenience for the duration of the two-year contract. However, the company had no choice but to switch back high-level execs and field salespeople who lived and died by their BlackBerry. In the end, what was intended as a cost-cutting measure took a toll of at least $10,000 on the company’s bottom line.

For the IT department, we were glad the tech envy had subsided, leaving us to slog through the workload that had piled up. But some important lessons were learned. For the director of IT, it was to negotiate a better escape clause to a contract. For the purchasing department, it was to revise the policies of using company equipment. And for users, it was that newer is not always better.

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This story, “‘I need a new smartphone! My old one, uh, broke’,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more crazy-but-true stories in the anonymous Off the Record blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.