The $840 scam from Sprint
Sunday, May 30th, 2010I had a horrid experience with Sprint lately. My current phone, a LG Rumor, has the tendency to power off instantly when it goes into standby. It’s random in occurrence. I finally called up Sprint again and asked what’s going on with the phone. Instead of the usual me having to tell them what’s going wrong the lady on the phone told me it’s a known issue with the phone found by LG. That is why the Rumor 2 came out. Even though I had 1 year left on my contract they offered me the $150 upgrade credit to replace the phone with anything I wanted with no out of pocket expense. I thought i was getting a great deal…I should have known it was too good to be true…and it was. That’s when the pain started.
First I picked out the phone I wanted…the Samsung Moment. This phone is basically my Rumor on major steroids BUT it runs Google Android(which is a Linux variant). I was stoked. Once the package arrived form Sprint I opened it and saw….an HTC Hero. An Android phone that has gotten poor review for performance and other issues. I called up Sprint and told them my issue. Sprint responded by telling me I would have to pay $500 to have them shop me the Moment i wanted and then they would credit my account once they got the Hero back. I told them you shipped me something I didn’t order…it’s effectively mine..and i will NOT pay for a replacement because Sprint screwed up. After several phone calls including one with the Sprint person telling me right off the bat,”i see you don’t want to replace your rumor with another phone” that prompted a series of hangups on my part. FINALLY I found the number for the executive offices and got a hold of somebody who could actually act like a human being. I told her…all i want is for them to send me the moment according to the deal I had originally gotten. She started to say the same line and i ended the call. She called back and tried again..i ended the call. A day later I get a call from regular customer service saying they had overnighted the phone to me..free of charge. I got it the next day. It’s now been a week since they screwed up.
The new phone arrives and it’s my new Moment. I’m stoked again and I try to activate it. NO dice. I call into Sprint and I am told me account doesn’t support the phone. I already had the $15 a month data pack rider on the account. This gives me unlimited data on the account(at least that’s what i was told). I was then told that’s not the case i have to go with one of the “everything” plans. This means i would go from a base plan of 99 to a base plan of 130…OR i can split off my phone and go with a $69 month plan by itself. Needless to say I wasn’t going to do either of those after the screw job I’d already been through. I told them to cancel the upgrades..revert my plan back to what i had before (which is minus the data rider)and kept the Rumor. The thing that hacked my off is the fact that two years ago that data rider would have all that was needed for ANY data phone to activate. I was lied to repeatedly and told it’s “not systematically possible” for them to work that way anymore. After having that line thrown at me a couple of times I explained to the executive rep about how a cell network is really like a data network and it’s not a design limitation of the network but a conscious decision by Sprint to increase the income from smart phones. Once i got done with that I was told yes that’s true. I then informed her I would not be giving Sprint that additional revenue from me and that was it.
What is comes down to is that the cell companies are every bit as corrupt as the landline companies are/were. Considering that many of the cell companies ARE/WERE landline companies this should be no surprise. Keep you eyes open with anyone in the telecom industry..none of them are really honest at all.
