Why we hate Sprint

We have been trying to contact Sprint about our cell phone service for a long time. I've been waiting for our contract to end. My phone is so old, I can't download a ringtone, and although I can RECEIVE a text message, I can't tell who or what number it's from. And I cannot SEND a text message. And, one more thing, the battery is taped on with Scotch tape. Otherwise it will not stay on.

I used to love my phone. It used to be state-of-the-art. It's a palm pilot, too, so it holds my notes and calendar. I learned graffiti on this phone, I've bought extra styluses (styli), I used to sync it with my computer. There are things about my phone I still like: it has my numbers in it, and lots of notes and lists, and my first 50 text messages (though I can only guess whom most of them came from).

But my phone is so old, my students make jokes about it. (One time, when I took up a student's phone, I said, "Don't worry, I'm not going to read your messages." He joked, "I know, your phone is so old, you don't know how!" (Which is true--the students know that I can't even send a text message.) So that was funny, and we all laughed.

Last week I tried to log on to find out about when our contract would expire. I wasn't able to log on. The web site said they were upgrading their system. It didn't recognize my phone # or David's. We also added a third line in August '06 for David's parents, but that phone got dropped in the water many months ago and although it doesn't work, we've still been paying for it.

Today after trying the web site again from two different browsers (no dice), I called customer service, waited on the phone 10-15 mintues of elevator music and a really annoying message saying, "You can log on to sprint.com anytime--it's free, easy, and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!" Well if this were true I wouldn't be on hold!

So I finally got a guy in person who kept saying, "Hold on while I wait for the system to find your information", and he tells us that we can't cancel the last line added since it hasn't worked in many months without paying to get out of the contract.

David said he specifically asked in the store when he got this phone, "Will this affect my contract?", and he was assured it would not, although it would be billed with our other phones. He was told by the Sprint (store) employees that it would not extend our contract when we added on the phone for his parents, and now Sprint wants $200 to get out of the contract before August '08 OR for $100, they'll give us another phone to finish out the contract.

Or, to get out of all of our Sprint contracts on the three phones, it'll be $600.

We first talked to Jason, then got passed to Sarah, and we keep asking (and waiting) for a supervisor. They all say the same thing. So far this phone call has lasted 46 minutes. Now David is talking to "Steven".

So now we're considering our options, including contacting the media, our hiring a lawyer (which of course would be more than $600--someone should go into that business), just not paying the bill anymore.

UPDATE:
David found a web site called consumerist.org with just the information we needed. We called again, this time recording the conversation on video, and boy was it worth it. We will not be charged the $600 when we cancel our contract!