[illustreous]

ITA with Beryl here. I called Verizon a couple of days ago at 1pm EST to tell them about a serious reset (fatal exception) problem I was having with my 600. Before he could even tell me what to do I told him what I've already done: soft reset, hard reset, system reset and, finally, factory reset. All he made me do was a factory reset once more and play with teh phone. As soon as I told him it reset again he opened up a ticket and ordered a replacement phone. He *understood* my proficiency in troubleshooting the problem before it even got to him and respected that.

The phone arrived at my office in 20 hours. It was refurbished but is a "C" hardware version. The speakerphone is n fold better and the unit doesn't even "feel" refurbished. I haven't had any problems yet with this unit.

Overall, I was very pleased with the support and it is why I'll probably continue to be with Verizon.

You get what you pay for.

To me it is simple.

If you want the newest technology and the lowest cost for voice and data, Sprint wins.
If you want decent customer service and the widest coverage for voice and data, VZW wins.

You have to make trade-offs. I've chosen VZW because I've become dependent on Blackberry function everywhere but prefer it in a PDA (currently a Treo 600). When/if the phone breaks or the service is down, I don't have the time to hassle around with reps. I want them to answer the phone and fix the problem --- with quickness. Today, I no choice but to pay a little more to get what I want.

[illustreous]

Simply false. I don't know where you get your facts from. If in fact this is your opinion then say "IMO...Verizon coverage is..."

My brother lives in San Fernando Valley and has Verizon service. I speak to him quite often and his service (coverage) is flawless. He knows others with Cingular and Sprint and they are providers the are average or below-average in that area.

Verizon...Coverage is great on East Coast but below average elsewhere.

[illustreous]

Agreed. However, when it comes down to troubleshooting, problems, data, software and harware issues - IMO Sprint fails.

If this was a perfect world and cell phones (esp. smartphones) did not have technical issues (with hardware or service) then Sprint would win because of it's competitive rates. However, realize that even if you live in an area where Sprint has "the best" coverage the fact still remains that their customer service does not get better with the coverage. That's silly, of course. They will still have sub-par CS and if you have to replace or repair that precious 650 then you'll realize why Sprint is actually a 3rd rate company.

I like Sprint because they are willing to work with us on 3rd party apps using the data service. Sprint doesn't care how you use their data. The behave like an open ISP. Verizon is picky about how you use their data service. They are difficult when using 3rd party comm apps and will attempt to sell you their own services and not help with other alternatives.

[Beryl]

While I am in total agreement with Verizon lacking on the data side, customer churn, JD Power surveys, and information from hobbyist websites such as this one do not support your claim of lackluster customer service and below average coverage everywhere other than the East Coast.

All true.

I'm in Colorado and Sprint & VZW have terrific service in the large cities but VZW is the winner in the less populated areas. Actually AT&T edges out (no pun) both in some areas.

Regarding customer service -- saying that VZW customer service is better than Sprint's, though true, doesn't say much. Even VZW has a lot of room for improvements. VZW has a few reps that do such a great job, it often makes up for the bad ones. Just this week I received one phone call and one text message from VZW as follow-ups on my recent phone replacement.

[PWC Realtor]

Coming from Nextel; I didn't realize how bad it was; My phone didn't work indoors most of the time. My treo 650 sprint pcs phone works everywhere my nextel IDEN phone didn't. I'm happy for now! (still a virgin; tomorrow is my 14th day)

I totally agree. Howeer, it's funny now talking to colleagues taht still have Nextel how loyal they are. They all hate hte service too but are very reluctant to switch (hopefully the merger will kill Nextel for good ).

[xenophonite]

They will still have sub-par CS and if you have to replace or repair that precious 650 then you'll realize why Sprint is actually a 3rd rate company.

Are you an individual user or work with over 1200 phone accounts? We support our 1200+ employee accounts with all carriers and do not see any noticable difference in Sprint or Verizon when it comes to replacements. Usually its quick, sometimes not - with all carriers. In terms of support, sometimes they all suck, sometimes you get great response or problem solving.

How many times have you replaced phones with both?


I'm rolling out 3-5 Treo 600 and 650s a week and am on the phone with Sprint, Verizon, Cingular, T-Mobile often. I'm just not having any consistent problems with activations or support issues with any of them. Though I was on the phone with Verizon this week with a Treo 600 issue (PPP timeouts) and got transferred 5 times. Not a common problem though...

[scotttreo]

I suspect if you have 1200 phone accounts you might get better service than the rest of us regardless of the company?

[BaldyTheEagle]

yeah i second that. i can't speak for B2B but for regular consumers, sprint really treats its people like dirt.

[xenophonite]

I doubt we get special treatment in support calls. We do have an account rep for each carrier but not a special customer support rep. Although I do call a different number to activate for some carriers. In my experience, I get below par customer service with each carrier about 1 out of 10 calls, which I guess I expect. I also tend to know more about the phones than some of the CS reps (all carriers) and expect to walk some through things they need to do. If I were to pick on any CS, it would be Cingular based on recent calls.

Perhaps because Sprint has more pioneering phones and a higher % consumer base, there is a higher percentage of issues for them to deal with. But I don't see their customer service any worse than others, especially in last year. Didn't they recently outsource their CS to IBM?

You also have to consider that whenever a new product is rolled out, it takes a while for customer support to get into the swing.



All in all, we recommend our users to choose a carrier typically on this priority...
- Coverage where they are the most
- Voice quality of specific phone
- Customer Support
- Features

Customer support is something you only deal with once in a while. Voice quality and coverage is something you expect every day. I tell users to be prepared to return the phone if they do not like the voice quality or if calls are dropped. But I wouldn't drop a carrier just because you had a bad experience with CS (unless they really screwed you over). I do expect to have a bad CS once in a while. I don't accept dropped calls once in a while.

Personally, I rank features above CS but I typically don't need CS to solve my problems.