I'm not too bright for answering both you and the troll, but the struggle to understanding never ends. Besides, you seem well-intentioned, so, onward. None of the points are pertinent. My beef is not with Google. I did not buy the device through Google Play, as My Troll said. I bought it at SAMS as I clearly stated in the first post. Second, Google is the only entity that helped me. They tried to recover the machine and failed. Since I did not buy it via Play, their responsibility ended there for whatever reason and they gave me all the contact info for ASUS. ASUS then, with out the slightest effort to help, hung up on me. They could have said contact Google to obtain your SN, or take the back off or anything. But as soon as they heard those words, they hung up. Not even a good bye. Just "Get the SN." Click.. THAT is my beef. Thanks to the people who took the time to understand my problem without parading their superiority, I now know how I can recover from this problem, or at least have leads to pursue. That's what the net should be. That is far more than was supplied by the troll who apparently read the last few posts and thought he knew the entire chain of events.