Any recent experiences with phone exchange process at Sprint?

[Procter]

I'm still within 30 days and I need to swap a defective blackberry to a WM phone. Contacted the ecare and was told that I need to call some toll-free number to exchange. They would get me a return kit and order the new phone, plus the restocking fee.

My question is if this is the definite answer with Sprint phone exchange process right now? A year ago, I exchanged phones at Sprint, but then it was more like wait-less, transfer-less process. I just email ecare, put such request, when they Oked it, they just ship me a new phone along with the UPS return kit. The new phone price (MSRP) would reflected on my sprint account as credit, when the warehouse gets the returned device, they then bill the same amount (MSRP) off the bill.

My concern is if they have me call the number to order, I'll probably have to pay the new phone price upfront with my credit card, then waiting for them to credit it back to my sprint account. Basically my credit card debt just increase by say $499, and afterwords, this $499 gets trapped in my sprint account?

And also how would they calculate the price difference as I'm exchanging for a different model. I'm just worried that I'll have to pay some outrageous price upfront with credit card to initiate the process.

Please provide some more recent phone exchange experiences (web orders). Thanks

[Procter]

Any inputs please?

[kixcastillo]

That's pretty much the way it goes now except for the restocking fee; just mention the sprint free 30 dial trial and you shouldn't get charged that. As far as the money being stuck on your bill, it's very likely this will happen unless you specifically ask to bill to your account, if it qualifies. If you do qualify then you'd see the charge for the phone on your account followed by a credit for the same amount when it reaches the warehouse. If it doesn't just ask to speak to a team leader and they should ok bill to your acct for this exchange.

[setox]

we are not really allowed to xfer yeah there is a restocking fee and why didn't you just go into a sprint corp owned store to get this done.... and by the way if you see u get xfered we are sopposed to get people off the phoone in under 9 min so when u call please let us fix ur issue quickly and pass us on that survey people get fired because of these surveys and also if u do say i will fail you at least leave a feed back sort of like hey that guy tom from account services was great but the guy steve from tech support was horrible and that helps us too.... we are under pressure

[setox]

Originally Posted by kixcastillo

That's pretty much the way it goes now except for the restocking fee; just mention the sprint free 30 dial trial and you shouldn't get charged that. As far as the money being stuck on your bill, it's very likely this will happen unless you specifically ask to bill to your account, if it qualifies. If you do qualify then you'd see the charge for the phone on your account followed by a credit for the same amount when it reaches the warehouse. If it doesn't just ask to speak to a team leader and they should ok bill to your acct for this exchange.

depends that for the first 30 days of new line sounds like this was an upgrade

[kixcastillo]

My mistake, I was positive the Sprint Free guarantee deal worked on cases where the phone was defective.

[Procter]

Originally Posted by setox

depends that for the first 30 days of new line sounds like this was an upgrade

Thanks y'all for the replies. Yes, this is indeed an upgrade. I just don't have time to get to my store before it closes everyday.

BTW, how would they calculate the price difference if I process the exchange through that toll free line? Based on MSRP as before or their web price (before rebate)?

[intrlude]

Originally Posted by Procter

Thanks y'all for the replies. Yes, this is indeed an upgrade. I just don't have time to get to my store before it closes everyday.

BTW, how would they calculate the price difference if I process the exchange through that toll free line? Based on MSRP as before or their web price (before rebate)?

Yes, the way the price is calculated is, whatever the price is with all applicable rebates plus the $35 restocking fee.

[sonysw]

Make sure you do it within 30 days--they are very strict about it.