I have been fighting with Sprint because of poor service in my area. I’ve had Sprint for years and initially had some trouble with defective phones, but found a phone that worked pretty well in my area. After having the phone for two years (a Sanyo RL4920 BRICK!) I upgraded to a Samsung A900 (Blade).

Note: I did originally buy a refurbished Blade from RadioShack. It was defective and RadioShack was more than accomodating. They replaced the refurbished Blade with a brand new one, from their latest delivery. I paid the difference between the refurbished phone and the new one.  Every problem I had with the refurbished phone is not an issue with the new phone.  I wish the people at the Sprint store were even half as helpful or polite as the people I dealt with at RadioShack! Unfortunately, they can’t do anything about Sprint’s coverage…and my phone worked just as well in their store as their demo phone.

Some "upgrade"!  I’m having problems with my calls dropping in town around my house, not to mention in my house. I have other friends who are on Sprint and they are experiencing the same problems. I called Sprint complaining about the the lack of coverage (actually roaming in the same areas I previously had coverage with my brick phone)…they told me I had to go into the Sprint store and have my phone tested to make sure it wasn’t my phone.

I went into the Sprint store only to find out that because I didn’t buy their service plan for $6.00 per month they wouldn’t even look at my phone unless I paid a $15 fee!!!  I can understand not FIXING the phone, but I have to pay to have it tested?! That’s ridiculous!  It’s not just my phone having the problem, my friends phones are having the problems too…it just doesn’t bother them as much because they rarely use their phones in town.

Right now, unless I want to break down and pay them to TEST my phone, my only recourse is to use the *2 option. What is that you may ask?  If you dial *2 on your Sprint phone you are connected to customer service. You will be given the opportunity to tell the automated voice what you need to do….just tell her you are calling for "credit for a dropped call".  She will apologize for the inconvenience and credit your account for one minute at the highest local rate. The good news is…it’s a pretty high rate. I get $1.00 for every dropped call that I report to Sprint.

I don’t know if they limit this credit, but I may be on my way to finding out. So far within the past week I’ve gotten $6.00 in credit for legitimate dropped calls.

Come on Sprint…$15 just to TEST a phone?!  You just don’t want to test it, then you’d have to address the problem with your spotty service coverage.

Moral of the story:  If you EVER have a call dropped on your Sprint phone…CALL *2 and ask for CREDIT FOR A DROPPED CALL!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 at 10:13 pm and is filed under Cell Phones & Accessories, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.