Results tagged “Sprint” from BrainDrain

Anyone that has left voicemail on a Sprint phone is familiar with the annoying "how to leave a message" segment that comes on after the person's greeting and before the beep. I'm pretty sure everyone on the planet is familiar with the concept of leaving a message, and having this tacked on to a greeting is really irritating.

Thanks to Engadget, however, you can Take Back the Beep: how to disable voicemail instructions on Sprint. Apparently the option has been there all the time, it's just buried in about three submenus of the voicemail system. At this point I don't believe that Engadget has instructions for other carriers, but I can only assume that their method is somewhat similar.

So, for you Sprint subscribers, please do me two favors:

1. Follow these instructions so that you can disable the voicemail instructions message.
2. Tell every Sprint subscriber you know how to do the same.

Together we can clear the airwaves of overly annoying and uselessly obvious instructions that waste more of our time than necessary.

If you've been following my Twitter feed today you'll know that I went to Sprint to get an Airave in order to boost the cell reception in my apartment. Sprint licensed Samsung's femtocell technology ("femto" being a prefix that is smaller than "micro", indicating a small area of coverage for personal use) which effectively creates a small cellular node in a residence or office. It supports up to 3 phones and Sprint also has plans available for unlimited long-distance calling and such, as the device is basically a PCS-to-VOIP converter. I have finally had enough of not being able to have reliable reception at home and having to go outside just to take calls which still may end up being dropped. Now that I'm doing the consulting thing, I need to have the confidence that my calls will not be dropped in the middle of conversations. As of this writing my Pre is now sitting at a full 5 bars of reception since installation of the device. It looks like it doesn't assist with my EVDO reception, though, so I may still end up switching on the wi-fi while at home in order to interact with the online world via the Pre.

This device is a bittersweet option for resolution, however. Sprint's charging $99 for this little beauty plus a $5/month service charge, most likely to recoup their original cost for the device. I've been doing some research over the last week and the cheapest I've found cell signal boosters for - even on eBay - has been $154 dollars, with most coming in well above the $250 mark. I can't figure out why they're so expensive. As it turns out, I'm basically just amortizing the cost through Sprint that I would pay up front by buying a booster somewhere else. As my man Sammy Hagar once sang, "They gotcha comin' in, they gotcha goin' out, same amount, in 'n out."

I'm reading that some people are getting the devices and/or the service for free via the Sprint Retentions department (the people responsible for keeping existing customers). My problem is that I'm totally boned in that respect because my contract got reset when I bought the Pre in order to get the paltry $75 discount that they were offering. So I can call Retentions, but I'm not sure what good it will do because they know that I can't go anywhere for the next two years and I don't think I have any bargaining chips. All I can do is say that I'm irritated with the service and say that I'm going to bad-mouth Sprint and Palm all day long, and maybe contact the BBB, but I doubt that will sway a big, soulless company like Sprint. They've got my money and they're going to keep getting it for the next two years because I'm not going to spend even more money to get out of the contract.

Thus, I'm really hoping that this Airave thing will give me enough cellular use out of the Pre so that I can not think about getting screwed over. And, hopefully, Palm will get off their buttcheeks and release a software update that will actually effectively manage the cellular antenna so that I can cancel the Airave service and not have to use it anymore.

This is the price of early adoption, technolust, and my indentured servitude to same.

I took my new brick into the Sprint store nearest me pretty much right when they opened, but still ended up getting in there behind some lady that didn't really know what she wanted and for some inexplicable reason, the only person on duty today was the manager - perhaps he thought Monday was going to be slow for some reason. Anyway, once the clueless girl in front of me wandered off to make some other calls or something about the new plan she wanted for her mother, I stepped up to the podium.

Once I told the guy what happened, he just immediately started the process of ordering me a new one. This is not an uncommon problem and apparently the Sprint techs don't know how to fix it so they just replace the phone (I wonder when Palm is going to get around to figuring out what the problem is and releasing a firmware update for it?). Luckily (more on this later) I was able to get a replacement phone this morning and as of right now, it seems that I'm back up and on the grid once again. And, surprisingly, neither the world nor my social life had completely disintegrated during my foray into the dark - well, surprising to me at any rate; I'm sure you all knew all along that nothing would happen. Smarty pants. I was just able to take the new phone to the office and synch it up with my laptop and I'm back in black. An interesting side note is that the manager at Sprint said, "I can give you a new phone, but I won't be able to get any of your contacts off of the old one." When I told him that I'd just synch it up with my PC and not to worry about it, he says, "Really? You actually use the synch software? You'd be surprised at how many people don't use it and then just lose everything when their phone breaks. They give you the software and stuff for free, but very few people use it." I find this pretty interesting because I thought that was the whole reason to get a palm-based smartphone in the first place...

Note for Sprint Customers Regarding Phone Replacement: Here's a little gem that I discovered this morning - Sprint stores will no longer just replace your bricked phone with one from the in-store inventory unless they have to. Their current policy now is to order a new one from the warehouse and have it shipped to the store because that doesn't cut into their inventory and prevent new sales of your model of phone. This may depend on the popularity of the type of phone, but just be forewarned - you may not walk out of the store with a replacement phone and might have to go dark for a few days until your new handset arrives. Here's where that "luckily" bit came in for me today: there weren't any Centros available to order for replacement today, so the default is to then replace the phone out of inventory. So, I actually did walk out with a replacement phone and a small hiccup in my service continuity. Had they actually had one available for replacement, I wouldn't have gotten it until Wednesday at the earliest, which put me into total overdrive from a communications paranoia point of view. But...that crisis has been averted and all is back to what passes for normal around here.

I wonder what call or text message God decided I didn't need to get last night?