Hey guys thanks so much for taking the time to respond

B the sim card does snap into the tray.....a very handy feature actually. And Scott yep I made triple sure with 2 different cards that they were in the right place. The problem is a defect in the sim slot... it's installed off center and isn't allowing the cards to slide in

I'm going to have to return it for a refund or exchange. I picked it up 16 months ago for $200 on clearance, and picked some mods up for it on clearance as well. It was a possible phone for my wife but she ended up wanting a pink G6 instead lol, so it has sat since. My credit card doubled the warranty on it to 2 years so I figured I'd better check it out before the warranty was up.
What I didn't figure is that there wouldn't be any more Z phone's available of ANY type

When I went through this with my credit card warranty on my wife's Kindle, Amazon said keep the broken Kindle and my card refunded the purchase price. I'm kinda hoping that happens again because I really wanted to try out the mods I have. It would be an easy repair for a shop to fix the problem, and even with a refund there's no more Z's around to buy, so I'd just apply the refund to the repair. And I'd rather get this brand new one fixed than get a refurb.
I learned a good lesson... don't hoard gadgets. Use'm or lose'm!