First things first, I cancelled quite a while ago. They decided to bill me, so I cancelled again. This time, the person on the other end of the line told me that if I send back my AiRave and my cell phone, that they will drop the ETF of $60.00, and that they wouldn’t bill me for the AiRave.

Wait a fucking second…

The AiRave was sent to me to make up for a deficiency in their network! Unless you configured your AiRave to only work with your phone, then anybody (neighbors, passing cars, etc) get to use the AiRave — a VOIP Femtocell that pisses away bandwidth and electricity you pay for — essentially, you become a paying wireless coverage area for Sprint.

Obviously, once I figured this shit out, I unplugged the box and threw it right into a drawer with my nasty old socks.

Well, so I ended up sending that back with their shipping box (always ask these companies for a return box. Paying postage is for suckers). I also got a shipping label for my phone. I ended up dropping $5 and some change at FedEx to ship the phone back in a cushy box (that way those pricks can’t say it was damaged). Really, I should have taped a brick to it since Sprint paid.

After sending these, and getting confirmation e-mails as well as seeing the box delivered on Fed Ex’s tracking system, I felt pretty good that I would never have to deal with these assholes again. I went out and got a deliciously tasty Droid 4 on Verizon, it works much better.

Then, I get a bill for $153 and some change. I call the number in the e-mail, and find out some terrorist is on the other line (or at least she sounded that way). She eventually hung up on me when I snapped on her. That was one of my last times talking to Sprint.

Enter 5 days ago: Stephanie, my beautiful, tolerant, and patient fiancee, decided that she wanted to deal with Sprint for me before they sent it to collections. “K” I agreed, as I wanted nothing to do with them. She spent over three hours trying to get some asshole there to accept the tracking number and confirmation number to overwrite the fees. Found out $36 of it was a reconnection fee — like I’d pay to get that shit. Long story short, I ended up getting back on the phone and asked the idiot for their address. For obvious reasons, she was quite vague. She says “Alabama”, and I explained to her that it’s a large area to send any notices of litigation to, as I wanted to pursue the company and her personally for harassment and to offset (financially) the hours we’ve wasted. I eventually grew tired of her jabbering about policies and how she doesn’t have a last name. I told her that I would do my best to have her, and her supervisor’s ass in the suit as well. She throws me on hold.

Please visit this tab for the next 48 seconds

 
Her supervisor, a swell chap she was, eventually figured out that her 8-12 colleagues before her were all completely fucking inept and were overpaid even at minimum wage. She squared away my account lickety split like a real champ. I even called back 3 times over the next few days and confirmed that my shit was cancelled and at $0.00. Funny, because their website (that I just checked) says this:

Seems she took care of it (at least over the phone).

Then, today, I get a collections notice.

They actually managed to get so fucking stupid as to send me a collections notice for $0.00, which is what I should have owed them for the past two years. I called the agency up, gave them my account number, and then congratulated them on wasting a stamp, paper, and ink to send me this valuable, and earth-shattering, information.

DURRRR..

So, fuck Sprint. Don’t ever use Sprint. I hate Sprint.

Why is it that Cell Phone companies seem not to be regulated by any sort of consumer protection groups? I swear, if there’s two kinds of shitty products in the world, you have union-made and made by cellphone manufacturer.

The Buildup

I have the worst luck with two items in the world. Cars and cell phones. Before going to Sprint, I had a contract with the Nazis over at Deutsche Telekom AG, or as we call these assholes in the US “T-Mobile.” I had some screwy phone with them, “upgraded” to this Samsung POSXL, and finally — POOF My contract expires =). I gleefully didn’t renew that shit and went and joined the non-tie wearing, “I’m approachable”, Dan Hesse’s Sprint.

A New Beginning

My Girlfiend had T-Mobile at the time, and was having similar problems with her HTC MyTouch 4G, but I’ve heard some really great things about Sprint! So I head up to the local Sprint Shack to pick up a phone. I had some requirements drawn out, didn’t care about the price, just wanted to see what was out there.

• Mobile hotspot
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• 3G/4G
• No extra cost needed for “books” like with BlackBerry to access applications.
• Decent data plan, network coverage, low on the minutes (I don’t talk much on the phone).
• Camera
• SD Card Storage
• Slide out keyboard or touch screen.

Looking around, I seen two candidates that caught my eye rather quickly. The Evo 4G Shift and the Evo 4G. The bigger screen, kickstand, and (if I recall right) larger memory size appealed to me. So, I slapped down the $300 for the 4G, fired up a two year contract, and walked out gleefully.

I feel like cleaning my ears out with an icepick…hard

It took two days to start getting pretty upset ENRAGED. Let’s just say when you’re relatively new to a relationship, and you go hours without replying to key texts, it makes your life bad. The phone would take hours to get texts, and to send them… Often times, they’d be totally out of order.

By the 5th day, I’ve decided this can’t possibly be that my phone is new to the network, so I called. They had to ship me out a “new” (read: refurbished) phone. Eh, whatever, $300 for a phone that isn’t a week old getting replaced by somebody elses shitty device… Could be worse.

So I get the new phone (and bear with me, because I am going to get foggy on the details for a little bit… So many replacements). And it seems to work. Eventually I had dropped calls left and right, and had to replace a few phones, for dropping calls, to bad charging sockets.

Eventually, on my second to last Evo 4G (Pile of Shit Edition, now with less G’s), the screen kept turning on. I had my girlfriend, boss, and co-workers witness this happening. It would sit on my desk, and out of nowhere just turn on… and what’s worse, it would never turn off! Probably that nice Carrier IQ spyware that we are (were) obligated to run, if not for root.

Well, all of this battery drain can cause only one thing — A hot battery. A hot battery causes what? Sometimes, failure, other times big explosions where the acid leaks out and burns the user. Luckly, my piece of crap was right in the middle. The battery did fail, but the entire casing buldged out so much that the outside cover wouldn’t click in, and the terminals wouldn’t touch.

Evo 4G Battery Explosion

It’s not quite as apparent here as it is when you feel the thing. NOS    Foggers from The Fast and the Furious would slow down before hitting this thing.

The black battery on the right is a stock battery from a similar HTC phone (with slightly shorter Z-axis).

Don’t be an idiot, idiot. Don’t disassemble batteries.

Disassembled Battery

I took the liberty to apply some razor blade and hate towards the battery and removed the stupid red wrapping and black plastic frame. I see a dent in here I didn’t before — and you can see the bulge a little more (P.S. Look at how high the edges are off of the surface).

Anyway, don’t take batteries apart. I shouldn’t have to tell you this. You will certainly die if you do that, in fact, I’ve employed a crack-head bum from a street corner to disassemble this. He’s dead.

Alright buddy, bad battery — that happens you know

It sure does. And up to this point, I couldn’t take screen shots of my terrible defective Sprint device. Good news, ladies and gentlemen! By pressing the power button and the “Home” button at the same time, the Evo 3D allows you to take snap-shots. They’re sort of crappy looking because they chose JPEG instead of PNG. Come on now, it’s Sprint & HTC!

Calls Dropped

Here’s a collection of some dropped calls, incorrect time zones, failed messages, awful download speeds (obviously shaped upload) and all the roaming messages one could want. The filename is left intact since it’s the phone’s internal clock’s timestamp.

I tried to do better and upload a gallery for each type, but WordPress is now chapping my ass. I live nowhere near the timezone change, and don’t get how I jump to Eastern Time Zone when I’m Central.

50 Images of total bullshit.

My Posts on Facebook about this:

My asshole > Sprint > TMobile – February 10, 2012

If anybody is trying to get a hold of me, you’ll have to use smoke signals. My piece of shit Sprint HTC Evo 4G pulled a Whitney Houston by having a nice little battery fire inside. – February 13, 2012

My Posts on their wall:

Bitching about complete lack of usability.

(I had another post in February, apparently Sprint was extra shitty, as that entire month is missing from their page.)

Other’s Posts on their wall that made me LOL:

“Your Service Sucks…”

CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL

“Wow! I could not regret signing up for sprint more…I actually regret marrying my ex husband less than I regret signing up for sprint….”

UPDATE May 9th, 2012

The Herald News (Chicago Sun-Time affiliate) did a report on the Sprint Service, quoting the Joliet, Illinois Police Chief: “It sucks.”

Read about that here: Sprint says tower upgrades to ease dropped call problems (That are actually creating them).

Additionally, Sprint got butthurt and keeps deleting the link to this post, so PLEASE share it on Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere else you can so word of this gets out to potential customers.

UPDATE May 23rd, 2012

Gizmodo just released a list of the top 10 devices to avoid, no shock that Sprint made the list.

Since this post, they have sent me an AIRVANA cellular booster. Two weeks later, I get an agreement saying that I have to pay $140 for it if I stop using it… I never agreed to that, so that’s a fail contract. Because I know Sprint has better lawyers than me, I decided to tell them to send me a prepaid box to send it back, as I don’t want it. I also (again) tried to cancel my service, which they (again) denied without ETF. I won’t be paying that.

Screw you Sprint, you chap my ass.