Issues with Sprint

Ten days ago I got the Sprint LG 325. It's Sprints only bluetooth phone, and I was pretty excited to finally start true mobile computing. Too bad the bluetooth is apparently only good for headsets however. I was kind of disappointed but decided not to get to angry since it seemed to be a pretty good phone aside from the lousy bluetooth implementation. Well this afternoon the phone took a turn for the worse, it started powering off mid-phone call. So I did what anyone who just bought an electronic device that stopped working would do and I went to my local Sprint store to have it replaced.

The guy at the Sprint store on my side of town (there are only 2 Sprint stores in Wichita) was very nice, and told me they could do an exchange, but they were totally out of the phone. So I hopped in the car and headed to the Sprint store at 3101 North Rock Road. A 20 minute drive didn't seem like too much hassle to just replace the phone. I waited about fifteen minutes and was finally asked if I needed help by a young man named Ryan.

I told Ryan that I had just come from the other store and I just needed to swap out the phone I had only had for ten days. He asks to see the phone and gives it the, did you drop and break this once over. He asks where I bought it. I say "Online at Sprint.com".

"And you brought it to the store for replacement?"

"Yeah I bought it at Sprint.com." At this point I'm thinking this isn't going to be as easy as it would have been at the other store.

Then he gets up and says he has to go ask his manager. Now I'm a bit confused, but maybe Ryan is new, maybe he doesn't know how the fourteen day policy works. I stand patiently and Ryan comes back with a new LG phone and says, "Just so you know any damage and we usually can't do this, even something this small." And he proceeds to point at the tiniest scratch, one I hadn't even noticed, that probably came from keeping my phone in my pocket. "But we're going to do it anyway."

So now I'm trying to figure out if he really thinks he's doing me a favor so I say "Wait a second, wait are you trying to say?"

Without missing a beat this 5'6" kid with a Napoleon complex says to me. "Well it's pretty clear that something happened to the phone. If you want to argue about it I don't have to do the exchange." So here's where I decide that as much as I would like to jump over the counter and kill the punk, I'd rather get my phone, go home and send a nice friendly complaint email to sprint. I shut my mouth, and even give the kid one last chance at the end to apologize. I tell him I sorry for being snippy. And I get "Sure whatever."

So now I politely walk out the door. And proceed to be pissed. I've worked as a Customer Service Manager, as a Sales Manager and every other retail position known to man. You don't treat a customer that way, especially a new customer. If Sprint thinks power hungry kids are the people they need doing customer service, then I need to look into a new cell provider.

So now my gripes about the phone. The one thing I tried before I ranted about this was to see if maybe my other phone had just been broken and this phone would do it's bluetooth thing right. Well forget about that. The phone has no Obex, I knew that going in, but it's supposed to support DUN. So I fire up my Zodiac, set the phone as a trusted device, create an all new network and connection profile. Then I hit the connect button and.... the phone disconnects after 13 seconds. This is a known problem, some people have it, some people don't. It only effects Palm devices but Mac's have their own set of issues. Pocket PC and PC devices seem to handle the DUN just fine. This is the first bluetooth phone Sprint has carried openly and it doesn't freaking work.