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Mon, 30 Aug 2004

Sprint PCS

I have a cell phone that I bought 3 years ago when I switched over to Sprint PCS. I signed a 2 year contract and when that ran out, they offered be a better plan if I signed another year contract--so I did. Right now my plan is 300 minutes with nights starting at 8pm for $30.00.

There are a couple of problems:

First, my phone's battery is really flakey. I have a Samsung Uproar which weren't particularly popular, so finding a new battery is difficult and I'm not sure it's worth the money.

Second, I'll be having a nice conversation and getting a great signal, then suddenly the signal disappears for 10 seconds causing me to drop the call and then comes back again at full strength. I talked to a guy at Radio Shack the other day and he said this is because my phone uses the old cellular service stuff and when I'm in a dense area and the cell tower needs more bandwidth for a G3 phone, it'll dump all the CDMA phones. I don't really know anything about cellular stuff, so I don't know enough to guess the veracity of his explanation. (Can anyone shed some light on this?)

Third, the Samsung Uproar has an exposed face. Since I've dropped it on parking lots and other gravelly surfaces, I've really scratched up the display making it harder to read. So it'd be nice to get a new phone that I can read.

On Friday, I went to talk to the Sprint PCS folks in Burlington, MA. After standing around in an empty store for 15 minutes someone finally "became available" and walked me through their "great upgrade plan". Turns out I have to get a plan that's $35 or more (my current plan is $30) in order to qualify for the $150 mail-in rebate on a new phone. The problem is that the $35 plans they showed me were $5 more than my current plan (which is obvious), had the same number of minutes (300), but nights start at 9:00pm so it's inferior to the current plan I have.

I did some rough math (which stunned the guy I was talking to for reasons I'm not entirely sure of) and figured that if I have the new phone for three years, then $5 * 12 (months in a year) * 3 (years to have the phone) is $180. That makes getting a new phone with their mail-in rebate and forced plan change $30 more than just buying a new phone outright. After I pointed this out, the guy didn't want to deal with me anymore which really surprised me.

I think I'm going to call Sprint PCS customer care and see what they say. I want to upgrade my phone but not downgrade my plan and pay more money in the process--that's a scam. If they're not interested in helping, I'll just wait out my contract and investigate my options. Maybe I'll switch carriers. Maybe I'll just wait until I've accrued enough Amazon.com coupons (I have an Amazon.com credit card) to buy a phone from them--though I'm not sure how switching from one phone to the next works.

Any thoughts?

06/01/2005: I don't understand why people find this entry and feel the need to comment on their sordid Sprint PCS stories. Anyhow, the update and conclusion to this entry is here. Read that before posting your sordid story. Also, cell phone carrier coverage is very area specific. It's fine in my area. If it's not fine in your area and you go sign another Sprint contract, I suggest you do better research first.

[ tags: life | category: /content | Permalink | View/Add Comments: 6 ]

Comments:

Posted by Brian on Tue Aug 31 13:35:43 2004
All cellphone companies have 'customer retention' departments who are responsible for keeping current customers happy. They can make deals to keep you from switching.. In theory, you ought to have more success working with them rather than a salesperson in the store -- they have the power to say yes.


Posted by Rob on Wed Sep 8 11:32:57 2004
In fact, Sprint's retention department is somewhat legendary when it comes to offering significantly better deals than even new customers can get.  Now, I've never experienced this personally, and I've heard that it isn't as good these days as it used to be, but it's worth a shot.

Also, on the dropped calls: it could just be a capacity problem, unrelated to whether you are using an older phone or not.  Cells in a CDMA system "breathe" -- the more heavily loaded they are, the smaller their effective range gets.  If you're near the edge of a particular cell's coverage area and there isn't another one overlapping it for your phone to hand off to, this could cause the sort of symptom you are seeing.  It is also worth noting that the signal strength meter doesn't really tell you much -- it shows approximately how well your phone hears the cell site, but that doesn't mean the cell site can hear your phone equally well.  They could probably replace it with a "connected"/"not connected" icon and it would be just as useful, but people like to see the bars...

It is possible that Sprint prioritizes 1X users over plain CDMA, but I think a technical explanation is more likely.  Keep in mind that the salesman wants you to buy a new phone, and simultaneously does not want to admit that there might be coverage or capacity problems anywhere...


Posted by will on Thu Sep 9 16:18:14 2004
I haven't figured out what I want to do yet.  I was tossing around switching carriers so I could get a phone like a Nokia 6600.  But...  well, half of me doesn't want to deal with the additional overhead of administering a "fancy" phone.

In regards to dropped calls, that's what the guy was saying.  He was saying the CDMA phones will get dropped while the G3 (or whatever the other system is) phones will stay on.  He said it only happens when there's not enough capacity for all the phones currently connected.

I don't know enough to evaluate what he said and what you said.  I do know enough to know it's annoying that I keep getting dropped.

Anyhow, I'm going to punt until October or so after I've taken the GRE that I'm studying for.  My current contract with SprintPCS expires 9/22.  At that point I'm a free agent and can evaluate all the options.


Posted by kp on Mon Dec 27 00:45:38 2004
I am in the same situation...I will wait out of my contract and dump SprintPCS...it is a scam...if you had any luck in upgrading phone without getting ripped off, pl. do let me know.


Posted by izzo on Wed Apr 13 03:50:34 2005
I also have a LG 5350 SprintPCS phone, for over 3 years now. My contract expired sometime ago and now they keep bugging me with crappy offers only and only to commit again, which I won't unless they give me a new cell. You can call customer support, SprintPCS's centers are outsourced in India, so most probably you will talk to someone there, and they really DO have a 'customer save' dept which if you 'threaten' to cancel MIGHT help you out. I also have the 300 min / $30 plan and nights starting at * PM, which I don't want to lose, cut I keep my bill in half with referrals and I can live with it. However one thing I am happy with - I NEVER had problems with reception; could be just the area I live in, but I am very pleased with the coverage here. I bought my girl a Sony Ericsson T616 and she is with CellularOne, but their service SUCKS.


Posted by Ken Brown on Wed Jun 1 17:38:25 2005
Sprint talked me into adding a phone, good idea unless you finally figure out that their coverage is the pitts compared to other carriers. They just hit me up for $150 for each phone I had for early termination. Each time you change plans or add a phone or nearly anything else, your 2 years starts all over again. For 7 years of service I was penalized $300. Sprint has to be the worst cell phone company ever.


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