Hiss during calls

Hey everyone,

I tried to search for this problem, but in AC I did not see any other posts about this problem in the Verizon forum. On the Sprint forum, one poster had the problem but there were no answers, so I thought I would try again.

I bought my Note 2 from Best Buy on Monday. I love this phone... except as a ... phone. This is sad.
When I am on a call, there is an intermittent hiss when the other caller speaks, or if there is noise behind them. When they are quiet, there is no hiss. This hissing is often loud enough to be distracting. Also my phone volume seems rather louder than I need, even with the volume turned all the way down. I tried looking for any patches/workarounds/updates and all I can find are posts from a few months ago on other forums of people who have had this problem. There was some talk about it being an "old batch" of phones ??? and then over the last couple of months, these posts have stopped. There was a suggestion to turn down the media volume, and doing that did not make a difference. When I have my bluetooth on, the problem is better, leading me to believe it's something about how the earpiece is wired. For such an expensive phone, I would expect to use it without a headset as needed.

So I am hoping this means that the hissing problem can be fixed by exchanging the phone and not something I have to learn to live with, because it is very annoying.

Any feedback is appreciated. I hope that I can get this fixed. I'm planning to go to best buy after work today.

Thanks!!