The family has been using Sprint PCS for cellphone service for nearly three years now. Their service area is pretty good, though since the move we don’t get service at our house (for that matter neither will any other service). My wife’s phone, a Samsung 3500, is about two years old now and was causing her no end of troubles. We found out that due to wear and tear the hinge element in these phones goes bad and causes the ear piece speaker to cut-out intermittently. Our other complaint is that with all the current offers we should be able to get more minutes for the same or less money than we are currently paying.

So my wife goes to Sprint to find out what can be done. On her first visit she is offered the $100 service credit with the purchase of a new phone as well as another 100 minutes per month added to our plan for no extra fee. On the second visit, after going to CostCo and seeing that the $100 is a mail-in rebate not a service credit, we confirm that it is a rebate and, by the way, did we mention that is for new customers only? Also, if you want those extra 100 minutes, it will cost you another $20/mo to share the minutes between your phones (up from $10/mo ea. on two phones). We leave.

Sensing an imminent break-up with Sprint we visit AT&T Wireless. The salesperson there was very cool, offering us close to $400 off three new phones, and a good price on a service plan. Oh, and the phones have Bluetooth, which means adding phone numbers and calendar items will be much easier. Schweet! The only thing holding me back was the fact that we would have to get all new phone numbers and then have to get in touch with everyone to update their records. A royal PITA.

Why do we need to get new phone numbers? Because there is no number portability as yet for cell phones. So when you switch companies, you need to get all new business cards, letterhead, etc., as well as get in touch with everyone else. Barring a pending court appeal in favor of the phone companies this summer, number portability will happen in November 2003. The FCC has suspended this implementation three times so far. Why? The cell phone companies don’t want it to happen. In an industry that is usually screaming for the government to get out of its business, in this case a Verizon VP is quoted remarking “wireless is competitive enough.”

Armed with an otherwise good offer we went back to Sprint one last time. The sales rep this time could offer us nothing except for $30 off a new phone. I dialed *2 to cancel service.

The initial rep could do nothing to help us and we were transferred to a cancellation “specialist.” After explaining the situation, she immediately offered a $240 credit to use towards a new phone, activation fees, whatever. And there were no additional service contracts attached. That was enough to keep us until November. Why it had to come to that I have no idea.

The wife now sports a sleek Samsung A460 phone and she is once again content, and thus so am I, until November …