Cellphones are all kinds of fun. Having recently moved to the Westchase area in Tampa, I’ve found my Samsung VI-660 flip phone fails to maintain a link to any Sprint PCS towers that might be in the area, although speaking to two representatives from Sprint today, I’m told the area is considered covered with respect to the terms of my two year agreement. Thus, fun ensues.

First, I found that Spring PCS is misleadingly including information about their new Fair and Flexible plans in my bills. Unfortunately, I have the older version of these plans from when I signed up in August of 2003. As such I falsely thought Sprint PCS had been kind enough to increase my monthly allocation from 300 to 400 minutes. Bzzt, wrong.

However, the primary purpose of my call was to attempt to determine what the roaming situation is with Spring PCS. Unsurprisingly, my original plan does not include roaming as an option, although the new Fair and Flexible plans do. So much for being fair to existing customers. Seeking clarification, I was first told that the 50% policy for roaming applied and that I would be charged the full cost of roaming if 50% or more of my total used minutes per month, including nights and weeks, were roaming minutes.

However, that does not solve my problem, as the majority of my calls are placed from my residence where I perpetually drop calls on Sprint’s network and I would handily exceed that rule, I investigated a potential termination option.

As my phone can contact a Sprint tower, from Sprint’s point of view my area is adequately covered and a termination fee would apply. Initially, I was told it would be $150. I calmly explained I didn’t agree and asked if I could trial a different phone in the same area and in exchange sign up for another contract. After some time on hold — I spent around 30 minutes on hold out of a 60 minute call — I was told I could terminate for $75 as I had been a subscriber for more than twelve months. Anything regarding trading phones for service commitments would, of course, have to occur at of the local Sprint stores by the manager’s discretion.

I again explained the roaming situation. After some time on hold, I was told that roaming could be added to my account for free and that there is no longer any 50% policy. Instead, any roaming is free, as long as you do not go over your monthly minute allocation. I also discovered my allocation was still the original 300 minutes, not the new 400 minutes advertised in my Spring PCS paper statement I receive monthly.

I asked that the free* roaming be added to my account, as this more reasonably resolves my problem, although Sprint PCS will be paying some rather extensive roaming on my behalf as I use around 1,200 to 1,400 minutes using Nights and Weeks every billing cycle. I have found that, although I did not have to sign up for a new contract as you normally would, I am still being billed for the privilege of free* roaming enjoyed by new Spring customers. That’s definitely fair and Sprint is quite flexible.

While it took 60 minutes to reach what I hope is a resolution, compared to the service I’ve received from Verizon’s landline and DSL divisions, Sprint PCS customer service was quite reasonable. Both representatives I spoke with were kind and tried to work with me within the bounds of my contract stipulations.

If analog roaming works reasonably well, I won’t have to reinvestigate my options until July as my contract expires in August. Unfortunately I have no idea how much my roaming costs will be if I exceed my 300 monthly minutes, as the information for the plan I have isn’t available on Sprint’s site. Perhaps I’ll see if I can find any information about my plan on my paper statement…

Update, February 10th. I finally decided to cancel my Sprint PCS service and it was quite a rollercoaster. After some time on hold, I spoke with a woman who was willing to cancel my service and honor the $75 credit towards my $150 termination fee as per our previous discussion chronicled above, but would go no further. Not really caring, I thought for giggles I’d have the Sprint PCS representative transfer me to their technical devision to attempt to confirm the obvious lack of Sprint PCS coverage in the area that’s clearly falsely advertised.

To my astonishment, I spoke with the world’s dumbest person. No, seriously; I did. For about twenty minutes, the customer solutions provider engaged in mumbling, typing things, failing to notice my address had changed, failing to change my area code, failing to explain how said change would help, and finally mumbling something about the business services department, at which point our glorious conversation came to a conclusion. I can only sum up my conversation with the dumbest person I’ve spoken with in my life as, huh?

However, my call was not complete. Speaking with a far more clueful person in business services, it was indicated to me that in my prior dealing with Sprint PCS, the roaming option added for $5 to my account had, unbeknownst to me and never even hinted at by the previous bunch of fools at Sprint PCS, entered me into a new two year agreement. That’s outright fraudulent. I never agree to any such thing. Thankfully, the business services representative absolved me of what I had not agreed to, a new multi-year contract, without a fight. I was also offered a reduced termination fee based on the number of months of my contract served. At this point, with 50 minutes wasted, I had little interest in arguing.

So, I ate what amounts to another month’s bill for which I won’t actually be getting service to be rid of Sprint PCS.