Saturday, August 2, 2008

GG Sprint

Didn't I read something about Sprint mebbe getting bought by some South Korean telcom outfit? Man, maybe they'd be able to straighten out these fucktards. I've wasted about 2 hours of my life trying to get my smartphone straightened out. Well... 2 hours and counting.

I spring for the $7/mo. to have a 3rd party insure my pda/phone thingum. The damn thing was almost $500, and I've had to have it replaced 3 times now. Once it bounced out of my pocket and down the basement stairs onto the concrete floor, another being dropped into the toilet by my 2 year old. (little shit! .... meaning the kid, the toilet was clean at the time). This last time I managed to crack the screen of it at the zoo somehow.

The first time Sprint mailed me a new one and it was even an upgrade to the older model I had. The following replacements were refurbished smartphones. The insuring outfit has a 30 day warranty on their replacement, and each time there's a $50 deductible.

10 days after the 30 day warranty had expired on this last replacement phone, imagine my surprise when its sound stopped working. No ringing, no sound or microphone working when a call is connected, no MP3's... nothing. When I contacted the insurance peeps (Insurion or something like that), they let me know I could get another crap refurb for another $50 or that I could drive an hour each way to a repairshop to see if it could be fixed. Yeah, that's gonna happen.

I called Sprint and let them know what I thought of that, and that what they could do with their phone and service. I got put on the line with someone from their "Customer Retention" department who tried to get me to switch to another phone and tried to offer me the same deal anyone gets when signing up for a 2 year contract. I told her I saw that deal online and that it was kind of insulting. She said she'd see what she could do and the line went dead. Gee. Imagine that.

I called back again. After going through 3 more people and back over to the customer retention folks, I got the same story about not being able to give me a better deal than what they give new customers online. I said 'fine, you can go ahead and cancel my account'. He said told me they were sorry to lose my business and that he was closing my account and we hung up. Five minutes later, my smartphone with no sound vibrates, indicating it has an incoming call. I always use a hands free set when dealing with customer service people so I can surf online etc while on hold... so I pulled it out of my home phone, plugged it into my cell, and of course it's the bright boy from Sprint.

He informs me his supervisor has authorized him to give me a better deal on the new Palm Treo 800w... $150 with a new 2 year agreement. That's more like it, so after making a couple more changes to my account we conclude our exchange.

Today, I get a confirmation e-mail indicating my new Blackberry Curve 8330 has been shipped, with a total price of $267.99. wtf?!? So back on the horn, 4 customer service reps this time... and supposedly squared away this time. I have to refuse delivery of the Blackberry. Of course they're going to screw up either the price or my account changes I'm sure. Is this worth saving $100 on the new Treo? Not really, but at this point it's the principle of the whole thing.

GG Sprint (that's 'Good Game' to you non-gamers.)


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Thanks for stoppin' by.

-Nick H.

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