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Sprint drives away another customer

I used to love Sprint. When they were an underdog long-distance provider competing with AT&T and MCI for your long distance plan on a land line they were fascinating, cutting edge, and competitive. Prices were attractive, and for a while I had Sprint as my long distance provider on my phone…. I carried an AT&T long distance calling card because it was more world-wide available (and being in the Air Force that was important), but Sprint has excellent rates for domestic long distance and good call quality. That was several eras ago. Everyone has effectively free domestic long distance now, so the only competitive edge is call quality and friendly billing.

I used to love Nextel. When the rest of the mobile phone services in the United States went to nickel and dime charges on everything their customers wanted, and silly gadget distraction; Nextel stayed true to it’s customers needs. They simply provided a phone for voice calls that happened to have exceptionally good call quality, signal strength, and full-duplex speaker phone functionality. No cameras. No music players. Limited ring tones. No text, but the damned phones just worked. All the time. Flawlessly. Awesome.

Sprint and Nextel merged. Nextel began to suck. Not all at once, but more and more each day. Their website became utterly and completely useless (you can’t even pay your bill online with fewer than about 150 clicks now). Why does any business make it hard to give them money?!? The signal strength in the same area I have been using my i580 phone in for nearly two years is getting weaker as components in the iDen network fail and Sprint does not bother to replace them. Their customer service stopped being Nextel excellent a year ago.

I don’t like being bugged by monthly bills, and I used to have Nextel set up to pay my bill quarterly. Simpler, fewer transaction fees, quick and easy. Been a Nextel customer long enough that they knew I was good for it. Sprint can’t figure out how to allow that, and insists on spamming me with calls beginning as soon as you are a day late on a monthly bill. I am done with them. Switching services soon.

PS: that means that a Nextel/Motorola i580 phone with 2GB SDmicro card, two chargers, and MobileAction i580 USB Handset Manager (v9.2 software and USB dongle/cable for Windows) will be available shortly to the first person to offer a back-rub, beer, or lunch.

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