For years, I was a content Sprint PCS customer. More than anything, I liked my Motorola Startac. It's a great phone with a great UI. Unfortunately, the antenna design is bad, and it broke again. My old phone is a few years old, so I thought I'd take a look at the newer alternatives out there.

This was mistake number one. Today's phones are so concerned with being flashier than the rest that they've forgotten that they’re supposed to be phones. If I wanted a game boy, I'd buy a game boy. I want a phone.

So I picked up a samsung phone (the N400, I think). Piece of crap! The damned thing didn't ring. It let you choose between two options of what it would do with an incoming phone call. You could have it play tones (music) or ringers (more music). Phones have been around a long time. Have you ever been in anyone's house where an incoming call turns the stereo on? No, because people don't want that. It’s stupid. So I went back to the store and returned the piece of crap the same day, before I ever activated it.

After this experience, I decided to stick with what I knew I could count on. Motorola has continued making good phones, like the V60 and T720. Unfortunately for Sprint, they don't offer any new Motorola phones. So off I went to the Verizon store. I'm now a very satisfied Verizon customer.

The next step was to cancel my service with Sprint. Here's where it gets really bad. I called to cancel at around 11:30 pm local time (PDT). The first guy I talked to said that because I'm such a valued customer my account could only be closed by someone in the retention department. Fine, transfer me there. So I wait. I wait. I wait 30 minutes on hold. Then the same guy comes back on the line, informing me that the retention department is closed. They just closed, at 2:00am central time. Midnight my time. I waited on hold an extra 30 minutes (because I'm so valued), and then they just closed and left me hanging. Bastards! So I have to call back tomorrow.

First, I went to the Sprint PCS web site, found a link that said email us, and composed a message indicating that I was pretty unhappy, and that this was a really bad way to treat a valued customer. Unfortunately, by email, they really mean post a web form. This form posts to an URL that just hangs. My message could not be sent.

So next, I composed a real email message. I sent it to as many addresses I could think of at sprint: support@sprintpcs.com, billing@sprintpcs.com, claire@sprinpcs.com, webmaster@sprint.pcs.com, postmaster@sprintpcs.com, ceo@sprintpcs.com. I gave them my story. I told them I'd called, been placed on hold twice, then abandoned. I told them I tried to use their stupid web form, which is broken. I also let them know I was originally canceling because of my bad handset experience, but this bad service far eclipsed any handset issues.

A few addresses bounced. Most said no such address. That's fine; I had made them up, and expected a few bounces. ceo@sprintpcs.com came back with mailbox full. One address (I think it was support@sprintpcs.com) succeeded. I got back an autoresponder message saying please use our stupid web form.

I'd tried calling. I’d tried to email (post the stupid web form), and I'd tried to send real email. Of the 3 communication channels I’d tried, I was 0 for 3. This is a communications company?

I then just tried calling again just now (during their regular business hours). They informed me that their system was unavailable due to maintenance/upgrades. I take this as a lesson learned to never use sprint anything for service availability.

So anyway, I'm still dealing with them. A month ago, I would have happily recommended the service, but it's a different story now. If you're already a sprint PCS customer, I can only advise you to be careful to never become a valued customer, and to switch to another carrier as soon as possible.

The only thing I can do at this point is fight to not be billed for this last month of service, and do my best to ensure that nobody ever pays them a penny ever again. If you're thinking about signing up with sprint, please don't. Do me a favor by helping me pay them back for the horrible service they gave me, and do yourself a favor by saving yourself from ever being subjected to the same. I'm so interested in discouraging people from giving sprint any money that I'll even pay you to sign up for Verizon instead. I think they offer a $10 credit for referrals. If you were thinking about sprint and saw this page, and decide to use Verizon instead, I'll give you the whole referral credit ($10, or whatever it is; it might be more). Contact me and we'll work it out. I can give you my Verizon number to get the referral credit and I'll paypal you the money as soon as it's applied to my account.

Apparently, I'm not the only one.