Saturday, November 27, 2010

Why Sprint Sucks

Once upon a time, the girl child, in performing an act of kindness and mercy for a baby crab, drenched herself, and alas, her phone, in a briny estuary. The phone made a few pathetic meeping noises from her pocket, and then spoke no more.

Various attempts were made to revive the poor beast, but it was done for, so a new phone was in order. While the nice lad at the Sprint store did heroics to pull the contact list off it, he pointed out that we might want to add in the equipment protection plan so that if something like this were to happen again, a replacement phone could be had without splashing out the primo price. Supposedly as long as it wasn't abuse, it would cover "everything": phones being dropped, bits falling off, whatever. Falling in an estuary? Sure thing. Given the girl child's track record on wearing out phones after about a year, it seemed like seven bucks a month well spent.

Time passed, and several phones, and another phone started losing its mind and hanging. Covered? No, that's software, not covered, but hey, it's OK because you're due for an upgrade.

Shortly thereafter the upgraded phone fell in some soup, and died. Covered? No, water damage not covered. No? When we *got* this plan precisely because of water damage. Nope. So nice young man was either a lying snake or an ignorant worm. Great. Fine, clone the info back to the phone that keeps losing its mind, and we'll wait out the year until upgrade time. Live and learn.

Then the trackball fell off. Covered? No. That's OK, she learned the keyboard shortcuts, waiting out the six months until upgrade.

Then the power charger socket broke so it couldn't be charged.

She talked to the nice Sprint people on line. Two of them, in fact, both of whom assured her that since I was a Sprint Premier customer and she was on my plan, she could use one of my upgrades, no problem, and they'd even put a note in the account so that she got the mail-in rebate as well. Just go to the store and they'll handle it. How helpful. She printed these conversations out.

What do you think happened when we went to the store?

Is the charge socket breaking covered? No. Of course not. Apparently, rather than "everything" being covered by the monthly tax, nothing is covered. Talk about your bait and switch, AKA lie, lie, lie.

Sprint is, of course, the master of bait and switch. They advertise their wonderful 4G network, and charge me a monthly premium because my phone is a "4G phone", but where oh where is this alleged 4G network? Anywhere I have ever been? Nope. Glad to see Visalia and Fresno are covered, though. And Sprint advertises that the phone can act as a networking hotspot, but do they tell you that it can only do that if you pony up an additional thirty a month to enable it? Naaah. That would be actual honest dealing, something Sprint is constitutionally incapable of.

OK, so can we do the upgrade thing the online guys spoke of? Let's just check....oh, sorry, no, because my line isn't due for an upgrade for another year it can't happen. So what about those on-line helpers? Apparently they were also either lying snakes or ignorant worms. But what we could do is add another line and then you'd get the discount on the phone.

OK, so if I pay to activate a line, and the extra ten bucks a month for at least the next two years (or pay $150 to cancel that line) as well as paying for a line that I don't even have a phone connected to, then, you'll actually deign to replace a broken phone that we have poured many many months of seven bucks a month of replacement plan money into, is that it? I'll get $150 rebate on a phone for the low-low cost of $240, or the even lower low cost of $160?

But you can't, heaven forfend, apply an upgrade to an account of over a decade's standing 35 days (yes, 35 lousy days) early? Or do what two of your online account reps independently said we could do? No, apparently not.

We declined that particular kind offer. We put the girl child's number onto my old phone. We cancelled the rip-off equipment non-protection plan. In 35 days, she'll get her telephonic life back.

Since we didn't actually buy a phone, we are going to even get the customer service "how do you rate us" call. So here it is, Sprint: on a scale of 1 to 10, your customer service today rates a 0. Thanks a lot. For nothing.