SPAM Filter Catch ‘O The Day 06/30/09

We’ve been Sprint customers for years and years (and years). Prior to the build out of additional cell towers in our quasi-rural area, Sprint offered the best call quality near our home, so Sprint it was.

Our two year contract was up in March. I wanted to renew and pick up a new phone, specifically the Treo 800w. However, Sprint quit offering it in February. It’s replacement in the Sprint lineup of Smartphones was the Treo PRO, which consistently tested slower than the 800w I wanted

At this point I looked at other carriers. I like the iPhone, but AT&T can’t even get my landline service right, and the pricing for their data plans was monopolistic at best. My iPod touch does almost everything an iPhone can, except make calls. It’s a fine device, an improvement over my old iPod, but the lack of a keyboard, or adherence to open standards, and NO FLASH means that an iPhone is not to be mine.

The current crop of BlackBerries? Meh. Although I thought at one point I was going to have to go with a BlackBerry, I’ve found that their Web abilities were lacking. Finally I elected to wait for the Palm PRE, an exclusive Sprint offering, which was Standards based, and seemed to be a quality product in all reviews. And really, switching carriers is a pain – moving the phone numbers from multiple phones, etc… so Sprint remained the front runner.

Sadly, it seems that Sprint didn’t want me to have the Palm PRE. And tragically, it seems that they didn’t want to keep me as a customer either. The PRE is available on June 6th, and at best estimation, in quantities of perhaps 3 units per store (Best Buy, Walmart & Radio Shack). No online pre-ordering is available. Nothing to incentivize current customers to sign up and extend contracts, purchase bigger plans, etc… So, I’ve been waiting for the phone that they intimated I could pre order, so that I could start a new contract, at a higher price point, but they can’t get me the phone, and can’t tell me when I might be able to get the phone. The customer service folks on the phone told me that Sprint had no preferences for existing customers, and that the PRE was hoped to garner them some new customers, since it is the latest gee whiz, must have, toy.

Please note that Sprint has recently lost about four million customers.

Make that four million and one.

T-Mobile doesn’t have 3G service in our neck o’ the woods.

Yet.

But it’s coming.

And so is my new T-Mobile G1 phone.

T-Mobile can give me the phone I asked for, when I want it, and is happy to have me as a customer.

Too bad Sprint wasn’t.

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