I Hate Sprint: Part Deux

I've ranted on here once already about Sprint's shoddy customer service, but I have a new beef with Sprint so I'm going to rant again. I swear Sprint has the most horrible customer service in the world.

My phone broke for the second time. I was trying to charge it and the charger got stuck. When I pulled it out, the whole charge port (is that what it's called?) pulled out with it. Sadly, I was unable to stuff the charge port back in my phone - although I did try for 20 minutes.

I took it to the repair shop -yes, the one I previously ranted about, but it's the only one I can find. They couldn't fix it because it had 'board level damage,' whatever the hell that means. All I can say is thank goodness I added insurance. I've had to use it twice!

I called the insurance place and paid $50 for them to send me a new phone It took a very lonely three days to arrive, but I finally got it, charged it and called to activate it.

Sprint: "Sorry - We Can't Help You. We're Updating Our Systems"

When I called to activate it, I was transferred to a customer service person who informed me that Sprint was migrating me to a new billing system (just me - no one else). Since she couldn't look up my account information, she couldn't activate my phone for three to five business days.

I was absolutely furious and sadly, lost my cool. After a long conversation where I told her, among other things, that it was ridiculous for a billing migration to take so long, I asked if I was going to be charged for the 3 to 5 days when I couldn't use my phone. She said, "Well, of course, you're on monthly billing." I argued that I should get a credit or something because it was their fault. Finally, she said she'd escalate that to her manager and I'd get a call back when my phone was ready to use.

Saved By My Own Brilliance

Luckily, I figured out if I charge the battery on my new phone and put it in my old phone, I can still use it. Personally, I think the Sprint person should have suggested that to me. I'm also really upset they didn't just activate my phone and fix it later if there was a problem. If my phone hadn't been broken during this migration, I would've been able to use it. Plus, there are tons of people who only have cell phones - I was even thinking of canceling my home phone. Not anymore!

It bugs me. Once cell phone companies have us, we're locked in a contract. They can be as crappy as they want and we have to just take it because otherwise we pay hundreds of dollars to get out of our contracts.

As soon as my contract is up (I can't see when because I can't use Sprint's website while I'm being migrated), I'm switching to Verizon. Give me that guy with the glasses any day of the week over Sprint's horrible customer service. I've been a Sprint customer for six years - you'd think that would be worth something!