[vonnieglen]

I thought I read that for those of receiving free data on an old retention plan... that even if you replace your broken TP2 with another TP2 that Sprint would start charging an additional $10 per month for data. The exception was people who got an insurance replacement. Has that changed?

It is amazing to me the amount of trouble that the OP went through. I have purchased over a dozen phones on Ebay over the last 10 years for my family and never got a bad one. Even the ones that were only in fair condition cosmetically have worked fine. I am not sure that I would actually notice a "blue spot" or the "oil" thing however. I am going to try and forget about the descriptions of those defects before I look at one of our phones again to preserve my happiness.

I think the suggestion of fixing your own phone is a good option. I have had to repair a broken phone or two over the years. I did have to buy a set of bits that could be used on the consumer proof screws to get them apart.

I still think that being as friendly and polite as possible to the Sprint operators is always your best option. A couple years ago I got a representative that was not aware of the retention plan that I had and accused me of being a criminal and screwed up my account. I had told her to look through the notes in my account and she would see that all I had ever done was accept what was offered to me. I called back the next day and got a nice person who fixed everything for me and actually added a couple more free features.

Going somewhere else or upgrading our phones is really not an option at this time for me. My friends are paying approximately twice what we are for their phone service and actually do not get many of the benefits that we enjoy. I hesitate to even mention some of the free benefits that the Sprint TP2 provides me with because I don't want anyone here to tell me that I am somehow violating my service contract. I will say that it was Sprint Customer Service who told me how to use the cable that was included with my phone to teather to a laptop when I first bought a PPC-6700 in 2005. I don't use that "free" feature very often but it is a lifesaver when needed.