This is why I only renew year to year. Every year at roll over I go in and get a hugely discounted nice phone ( 240 phone for 60 or something like that) for renewing the contract and keep one or two as back up or in case the kids or ex’s phone dies and I can have it activated instantly to take over.
As side note I may be wrong but IMO the prices of the better cell phones are artifically set by the manufacturers way, way beyond the price of actual manufacturing costs to give people a perceived sign up deal incentive of a few hundred dollars which is then rebated back to the retailer by the service provider. It would be interesting to see what the service providers actually pay for the phones.
Final update, I think. My wife talked to the original sales rep at Sam’s Club who sold us the contract and she gave us a TMobile 800 to call. After 15 minutes or so on the phone where she described the situation and our displeasure with the attitude of the TMobile store personnel, we will be getting a new phone like the original model for $70 and we can return the one we bought last week. A stiff price to pay, I think, but one I can swallow since this whole situation is not TMobile’s fault, and because the customer service people were helpful and had non-shitty attitudes.
This entire situation could have been completely defused if the guy in the store wasn’t a jerk. If I could have gotten this deal on Wednesday, I would still be irriitated, but at myself not TMobile. Is the idea of good customer service that difficult a concept for companies to grasp? Or is it that hard to find people who are that good? I’m thinking it’s the latter,and TMobile should be thankful that they have at least one good person dealing with customers.
Cause otherwise I would have padi my bill for a year then switched. That would have shown them!
No shit! Sprint is the sorriest crap in the world!
And their so called “customer service” sucks too! I’ve never been so unsatisfied with this company as I am right now! Tomorrow I’m going to send them $150.00 to end my 2 year contract. I’m going with Cingular from now on.
I don’t know about the rest of the cell phone industry, but I used to work for Sprint, and here’s how their insurance worked:
You paid $4 a month for the service, and when your phone died, you called them up (the insurance company, not Sprint), they’d ship you a pouch for you to mail your phone to them. When they got it, they’d ship you a used phone of “equal or greater value” if they didn’t have any phones like yours in stock. Notice, what I put into quotes. Because it didn’t always work that way. Quite often, you got a really crappy phone in return, one that wouldn’t work with your accessories for your old phone. If you called in and got lucky, the CSR would comp you a replacement phone like you had before that was brand new. Most of the time you wouldn’t get lucky.
I always recommended that folks buy a phone that they could easily afford to replace and not get the insurance because of this.
Weird. I love Sprint. I had them for two years until last year when I switched to T-Mobile. I HATE T-Mobile with a passion. They dropped calls all the time in NY, an when I moved back to Virginia, I dropped calls incessantly in my house. I couldn’t figure out why, so I called them. Turns out my house is in a BLACKOUT area of Richmond. And they wouldn’t let me cancel my contract early. I kept asking them what part of keeping my service while in a blackout area made sense to them.
So I switched back over to Sprint and I’ve been very happy with them. No problems whatsoever. And I’ve called customer service several times on various issues and they’ve been nothing but polite and helpful.
This experience has soured my tentative plan to cancel our home phone and get a second cell-phone instead. A second cell phone would be $20/month and our home phone runs just under $40. I don’t use the cell phone that much, but even with the new all digital TMobile network I don’t like the sound quality. Maybe I’d get used to it. But the cell phone-only idea still appeals to me because the phone to phone calls between my wife and I would be free and unlimited, adn I can always use my phone at work for local calls and such. Of course, the real benefit to this whole plan is that we also “have” to get a cable modem. Darn the luck! It’s a net cost of about $10 a month (provided my daughter isn’t able to destroy any more phones), so no savings, but much more convenience, I think. But with such hit-or-miss customer service, I’m not sure I want the aggravation.
Because if you pay cash for a car and crash it, you’re just out the car. If you pay cash for the cell phone and trash it after a month, you’re still out 11 to 23 months (depending on the length of your contract) of $30 to $40 a month. Given the “pure profit” that those months would be for the cell phone company, and the disgruntlement level of the customer stuck in this situation, it’s reasonable to expect them to provide a relatively low-cost way to get a replacement phone to use for the remainder of the contract.
Which it now sounds like they do ($70 straight from TMobile). I wouldn’t expect a dealer to take a loss on a phone for me, but I’d expect the company to do right.
BTW, I switched to Virgin Mobile a year and a half ago. Best thing I ever did. I don’t have to spend more than $20 every three months, I’ve gotten a signal almost everywhere, and I only pay for minutes that I actually use. And if I drop my phone in a sink, I buy another one for $80 and transfer my balance.
While on my recent vacation, I was asked for my cell phone number or told to call using my cell phone by my father, brother, sister, and mother, and a friend from college. My standard response for why I don’t have a cell phone is that “It’s a luxury we wouldn’t use much, and we’ve decided there are better things to spend our money on.” This statement was met with more resistance than I had expected–my sister-in-law was actually offended, and replied with a very cold, “You’d think differently if you had children.” My father practically gave me a sales pitch for a cell phone as a “safety device” (12% of households with cell phones have gotten rid of their standard phones–as if this were persuesive evidence that I should get one).
I have made precisely one telephone call in the past five years from places where a cell phone would have been more convenient than a regular phone, and that one required a five minute stop at a pay phone. My home has a telephone. My classroom has a telephone. My office at the college has a telephone. My car has a GPS system linked to a central system that provides every emergency service that I might need while on the road (in addition to a slew of convenience services), and does it automatically if I’m in an accident. A cell phone that I never intended to use bundled with a plan for minutes that I would never use for the entire time I was locked into it would be a foolish waste of money.
This thread makes me feel vindicated. A cable modem was indeed the right use for that $40 a month.
Isn’t it really the same thing as paying a cash downpayment for the car and having a loan to cover the rest?
If you don’t get insurance, and you crash it the next day, it’s not like the rest of the car’s price is forgiven. You’d still be paying say, $200 a month for the next five years.
It’s a net cost of about $10 a month (provided my daughter isn’t able to destroy any more phones), so no savings, but much more convenience, I think. But with such hit-or-miss customer service, I’m not sure I want the aggravation.