Convoy-3 problems

[Old-Dog]

After giving up on my Convoy-1 cell phone due to it not powering off correctly, Verizon/Samsung removing all of its firmware from distribution, etc I bought a brand new Convoy-3.manufactured in 2015.  Worked fine until Verizon pushed two software upgrades to it without asking me.  I thought that the first software upgrade went OK last Weds.  It didn't cause any obvious problems.  But then Verizon pushed another software upgrade to it on Thurs and that caused the main display to go bonkers.  The lower 1/3rd was mostly gibberish.  The upper 2/3rds.had the mini desktop in the left half and then repeated it again in the right half of the LCD screen.  All very small and mostly unreadable icons/characters.  Further, just like the Convoy-1, powering it off caused it to reboot and come back on.  I had to remove the battery to truly power it off.

What's really annoying about this is that I was not asked about allowing the software upgrade.  Verizon just did it without asking.  And the phone was in an area with marginal Verizon coverage at the time (my home).  Where the phone is often searching for service.  Not the best conditions to do a software/firmware upgrade.  Presumably the Weds upgrade failed and thus Verizon tried it again on Thurs, which screwed the phone up badly.  

After a couple of hard resets to restore to factory configuration, then *228 activations, the Convoy-3 will now power off correctly and stay off.  After booting back up the gibberish is gone on the lower 1/3rd of the main screen. The lower half of the screen now has a "Verizon/Wireless" logo with a gray/white background.  And the upper half of the screen has the two identical instances of the mini desktop.  One on the left side and one onthe right side. Clearly, Verizon has programmed this phone to do that.  This came from the second Verizon software push last Thurs.  All done without asking me!  And its screwed up my phone.

And this all leads me to believe that my Convoy-1 phone was also likely screwed-up by Verizon given that both phones had the power-off problems.

I also found out from Verizon that there is no way for me to prevent Verizon from pushing software upgrades (more like downgrades) to these phones.

In the case of the Convoy-3 I've tried going thru the settings menu to see if I can restore the screen to its proper format with readable icons et al, but so far no success.

The firmware Verizon pushed into the phone is U680.OL1.

Trying to reload the firmware seems to be difficult/impossible as the phone says that the firmware is the current version and won't reload.

Using a PC, I tried the Verizon Convoy-3 Repair Assistant - Software Upgrade Assistant (Samsung) procedure described in this Verizon link:

   https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/knowledge-base-80201/

But the "Repair Assistant" icon seems to be missing.  I sure can't find it.  Discussions with Verizon Technical (non) Support were not helpful.  The two people I talked to knew nothing about this procedure and weren't interested in looking at it, helping me with it, etc.  The stock answer from Verizon Technical (non) Support was always replace the phone.  And then, of course, Verizon will push new firmware to the new phone without my authorization and I run the risk of Verizon screwing up a third Convoy cell phone.  After all, Verizon has already screwed-up two of my Convoy cell phones.  Good track record!

Anybody have any similar issues?  Solutions?  Anybody successfully use the Verizon Convoy-3 Repair Assistant?  And why are Verizon Technical  Support people so unknowledgeable, poorly trained and unhelpful with the device tools on their company's own website?

Thanks,

Old-Dog