"Sprint, together with Nextel"

Can both go to hell if you ask me.

(Bloggy and rantish but I need to vent)

I switched over to Sprint last year because my company has an 18% employee discount and figured it'd be a good deal. Well, the service has been plain lousy. Whether that's because of the phone or the company, it doesn't matter, I miss calls, text messages, you name it.

But that's not the fun part -- I have more minutes than we can use on our current plan, and there's a Sprint plan that's just perfect for what we need. Well, apparently, I'm a Nextel customer and it's not available to me. Forget that they're one and the same now, forget the whole "together" thing, can't have it, sorry. And the condescending prick on the phone immediately goes into the "I don't make the policy, I just inform the customers" routine that doesn't make matters any better. And of course, the plan I have is the lowest number of minutes a two-line account can have, so I'm stuck with it. And he wraps up the call by asking if there was anything else he could do. Nope, thanks, done enough.

Then I see that Sprint is raising its rates on text messages over the number you get each month by ten cents. Aha! A material change in my agreement! See ya, fuckers! Oh no. They've released a statement specifically stating that this does not count as a material change and that therefore no one can cancel their account over it without paying a fee.

So it's either wait it out another year or fork over $400 to cancel both lines of service. And if I had the cash, I'd be gone in a heartbeat.

I just don't get how a plan -- which is simply what they charge me -- can't be available. There's absolutely no reason for it. None.

Because the last time they raised the texting rates, thousands of people used it as a loophole to quit. Now they've closed the loophole.

No, here's what happened. Their terms and conditions state that anyone can cancel their account without a fee if the company makes a material change to their service, which is what many argued happened the last time they raised texting rates, so they cancelled in droves. This time, Sprint specifically stated that it is not a "material change" to anyone's contract, since text messaging is an added feature, not part of their service. So even though this is an increase over what I signed up for, I can't get out of it because they have declared it a non-cancellable action.

I've seen two arguments as to why this doesn't qualify, one that since you're not required to have text messaging, you can simply cancel text messaging if you don't like the hike, and the other that if you didn't cancel over the previous rate hike, you tacitly agreed to any further raises. And since I have a text package and only pay per message if I go over my monthly limit, they could probably argue that I am not adversely affected by this.

However, the fact that they put so much thought into this tells me they think it's a material change and are proactively covering their asses.

By the way, many think that this will lead other carriers to make a similar move, so if you like your texting, keep your eyes open.

So I got an email from Sprint customer service last night informing me that all I have to do is call and ask to be switched from Nextel service to Sprint service, which they'll do for no fee, and I can get the plan I want. Why the phone monkey I spoke to never mentioned this little tidbit is beyond me, unless it's something they're doing as a courtesy.

Well, reading it again, it says I can switch with no activation fee or early termination fee, but it does say I have to switch phones, which, although they don't come out and say it, likely means I'd be re-upping for two years.

Here's my dilemma -- the Sprint plan I want is $59.99 for 550 minutes on two lines. No other provider has a comparable rate for that price, and Sprint has nights and weekends starting at 7pm included, whereas most others I saw charged a fee for this. But I'm fairly sure I'd be hit with the two-year contract if I make the switch. So do I keep paying the higher rate for another 14 months, or do I get the lower rate (and possibly two new phones for free) but be bound for another two years? I'm beginning to think our service problems stem from the neolithic phones we have more than the network.

Well, they'll port the lines over, but while I get a $150 rebate for my line, my girlfriend's line only gets $75, making the second phone a good bit more expensive. Not sure I want to do that yet.