No time like the present to throw out an off-hand reference to Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, while talking about my phone.
As some of you may have noticed in a previous post, my phone was stolen while I was in a homeless shelter. I had a normal habit of placing my phone next to me in the bed while I’m charging it up, basically sleeping with it on the charger.
After about two months, someone decided it’d be fun to steal my old Samsung A640.
At first, when I went into a Sprint location (on Kennedy Blvd. and Himes Ave.), they not only didn’t want to work with me, but they also breached account privacy by not going through a proper validation step for the account. That is, they didn’t ask me to provide identification, AND they didn’t ask me for the account password to prove that I am who I say I am.
They simply turned off the phone, and didn’t bother working with me. They could have said, “Since you didn’t have the full insurance,” (another gripe for later), “the only way we can offer a discount on the price of the phone is by renewing your contract for two years.” That alone would’ve pacified me. No, the girl was rather rude in her portraying that I would have to pay full price on the phone, and there wasn’t really any other option.
I was seething mad after that in the first store, and didn’t trust that they had even done anything, so I went to another Sprint location in WestShore Plaza. I met a rather nice guy in there, and he was much more on top of things. He actually took an effort in validating who I was before confirming that the phone had been deactivated, and I hope that the higher muckity-mucks at Sprint know to reward him for that, since I ended up calling Sprint several days later.
I called Sprint on Monday morning to just close my account.
Since the cost of replacing the phone would be more than the cost of terminating the account early, I called in, and made my complaint about that one Sprint store, gave kudos to the other, and then asked for the cancellation department.
I get a rather nice gal on the other end in Cancellation (probably labeled ‘Saves’ internally, since she did her best on this call to keep me), and I explain to her just why I was cancelling my Sprint account (the privacy issue*, the fact that at this point the cost of early termination is lower than the cost of replacing my phone with a decent one from Sprint, and a bit about how the insurance plans were portrayed to me when I bought the phone, which all pulled things together in how I wanted to just cancel and get it over with).
She asked me to hold on, so she could relay the issue to a supervisor.
She and the supervisor basically apologized for the problem, and asked if I’d be willing to stay on with Sprint if I could get a discount on a replacement phone, since I also told them that I was considering coming in the next week anyway to try getting an upgrade to a better phone (read: they saw dollar signs there).
I listened to their terms and conditions on it, which they boiled down to actually (zOMG) make sense in a short period of time, while offering full information.
I was interested, so I accepted.
Sprint is mailing out the replacement phone, and all I need to do is go make a payment for it. 
I won’t disclose the amount of the payment here, but I’ll say this much:
- It beats paying full price for this phone!
- It beats paying Sprint the cancellation fee, and then buying a prepaid phone or buying a MetroPCS phone (which I was reconsidering).
The week’s beginning to look a little better, especially with the phone replacement I’m getting:
I’ll be receiving a Samsung A900m to replace my old Samsung A640. (You can compare them side by side at phonescoop.com by following this sentence.)
I just need to bide my time now.
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