Yet another “my cell service provider sucks” post.

When we moved here from the East Coast, we wanted to change our number. We were told by the Sprint service person on the phone that it would require signing up for a new two-year contract. We were on a discounted plan (state employee), so we didn’t want to enter a new contract just for a new phone number, and thus we put up with a few annoyances for about a year:

• Voice mails with East Coast timestamps (I think). Sprint told me that getting the timestamps corrected would require getting a new phone number.
• The handyman for our house was unable to call us because we were outside his metro calling plan’s range of service (no out of state calls).

Finally we decided to switch to a pre-paid (“pay as you go”) plan (T-Mobile, $0.10/minute), so it was time to cancel service with Sprint. I called them tonight, and:

• First rep transferred me to the “cancellation department”.
• Second rep at the cancellation department transferred me to a “special” cancellation department because of the discount plan.
• Third rep (finally) said that changing numbers would not have required a new plan (oh well), and that they would cancel the service after the billing cycle was over.

So we are now stuck with paying for two more weeks of service we don’t intend to use.

Ironically, when moving to the East Coast, I had switched from T-Mobile to Sprint, and T-Mobile had canceled my service immediately after the phone call. So welcome back to T-Mobile!