Sprint/Touch Pro Hell - Sorry for the long read!

[mrchris1234]

This is gonna be a long post to explain this all and make it make sense, for that I apologize in advance.

Late October I called Sprint to inquire about touch pro pricing and see if I could wheel and deal on it, was told $299 (although later charged 399 and learned that the last $100 was a rebate, although this wasn't explained at the time) and he changed my plan to supposedly save me $50 or so per month over the current plan I was on (3 lines plus data card).

Got the touch pro and immediately had big time battery problems. Now before someone starts flaming, this was beyond short. I was getting about 30 minutes standby and less than 10 minutes talk time. This was with bluetooth and wifi off, data connection on. Based on others observations about the battery improving I tried to deal with it for a couple weeks. instead of getting better it got worse and I was down to the phone going dead within 10 minutes being unplugged from the charger without even a single call. When plugged in I could make calls up to about 10 to 20 minutes until it overheated and stopped charging. Certainly not a situation I could live with.

I called customer care and was told the faster resolution was to exchange it at a sprint store. Went to the nearest sprint store and was told that they had not yet received refurbished phones for exchange and wouldnt for another 6 to 8 weeks but they would call me when they came in. I was asonished, this is a brand new defective phone. I am not waiting for a refurb, give me a new one. They wouldn't. Call back to customer care, the poor gal was floored and went to send me a new one. Then came back and said sorry they are backordered and we will not get more for at least a week.

10 days later I get the replacement phone along with a postcard stating that the return kit (for the original phone) was backordered. Activate the new phone, wow now I get 3 hours of standby time and about 20 minutes talk time, longer than before but still not in the ballpark, but to make matters worse it freezes up repeatedly during the day. Every time I try and do a send/receive in pocket outlook it crashes and requires a soft reset. Randomly sometime even during the night on the charger it locks up and not even a soft reset works and I have to remove the battery to reset it. Try a hard reset and start all over, still doing the same thing (bone stock, no registry changes or any additional software installed).

Another week goes by and I still dont have the return kit for the first phone but now I have two touch pros billed to my account ($900 with tax and shipping) ughh... Call back to customer care and they resend the return kit only to receive a postcard saying its backordered yet again. Call again after receiving the postcard and finally two days later I receive it. Send back the original and call about the replacement being worse than the original (at least it was stable even if I had to leave it plugged in 24x7).

Then I get my bill, $1800+, two touch pros and then a $200 Early Termination Fee for sending in the first phone (the account didnt change just supposed to be a warranty replacement) And then the supposed plan changes were messed up and instead of going from roughly $340 per month it was supposed to drop to about $270 and instead was now $830 for the current month.... what the hell... So after spending several hours on the phone and finally working my way up the ladder I reach a very helpful gal. She was really quite amazed at how messed up things were, fortunately there were pretty good notes by the customer service reps and she could see what was supposed to be happening.

She got the plan issues resolved and credits in place for that, got the ETF fee reversed. Turns out the second phone was sent as if I had ordered it instead of as a replacement which never would have been billed (unless I had not sent in the original) but as I had already sent it in I had to wait until the returns department issued a credit and was told that could take 2 to 3 billing cycles. So she issues a temporary credit so it will not impact service and give them time to process it. And then sets up another replacement (the correct way) to replace the second defective phone. But now the very next day (today) I get an email from returns saying that the phone I returned is INELIGABLE for credit but also will not be returned...WTF

I've been a sprint customer nearing 12 years, I've had occasional issues but I have always had them resolved pretty quickly and found them pretty responsive. This though is getting ridiculous, in the last 2 months I have probably 15 hours into sorting through this between time on the phone either talking with someone or explaining it or on hold, time at the sprint store waiting in line, time wasted to and from the UPS store to either pickup or send back equipment..... Geez this is frustrating and to make matters worse its still not over.