Wandering Road

Bobby got a new cell phone recently.  It is the Palm Treo 700p.  After taking a look at it myself, I’ve started to get jealous.  The problem is that I just renewed my Sprint contract at the beginning of the year for 2 years.  So if I wanted to buy the 700p and stay with Sprint, I couldn’t get any new/renewing customer bargains - I’d pay the full price of $600.  And if I wanted to go with another carrier, I would have to pay $150 to get out of my Sprint contract.

At least, that was the case until Bobby sent me this link.  Apparently Sprint increased their text message rates from 10 cents each to 15.  This change constitutes a “material change to the terms and conditions”.  And if a “material change” is made, then the customer can cancel service without having to pay their end of contract fee ($150 in my case).  I did a google search and found a great forum thread on slickdeals.net about this.  Turns out that it is true, though a little difficult to achieve.  Sprint is fighting pretty hard to stop people from canceling - sometimes they offer perks (like free messaging) to get customers to stay or just say that this change doesn’t impact you and you can’t cancel.  But with determination, people are able to get their account canceled without a fee or have the fee waived in case they decide to cancel in the future.

I saw this as my perfect chance to get that 700p.  It took 2 calls and talking to 3 service reps, but I was able to do it.  I canceled my Sprint contract without a penalty.  My advice to anyone who wants to do this is to first read the forum thread.  Second, stick to your guns and topic when you call.  The reps try to lead you astray by asking you if there are other reasons you are canceling or offering you free perks.  Just keep repeating, “you changed the cost of messages……this is a material change in the contract……i want to cancel my account”.  You’ll get there in the end.

So after that fiasco, I was ready to order my new phone.  I was going to do the same deal Bobby did through Amazon.  I log into the site, select the phone, select the plan, select the options, and then click checkout.  I’m asked to select the shipping address and I do.  I’m then asked to enter the shipping address again.  It becomes a continuous loop and I can’t get any further in the purchase process.  I call support (or more accurately, have Amazon support call me - cool new feature of the site) and find out they are having a glitch with checkout on some items and my 700p is one of them.  So I have to wait a day before I can buy it.

So now that I can’t get my instant gratification, I decide to continue surfing.  In my reading on the slickdeals thread, I kept seeing references to Sprint SERO plans.  I didn’t think much of it then, but with some free time on my hands, I decided to research and came across another great slickdeals forum thread (I must visit slickdeals more often).  Turns out that SERO stands for Sprint Employee Referral Offer.  Sprint is offering specially priced plans to friends and family of employees.  The kicker is that to get the special offer, you just need the address of a sprint employee.  You don’t have to know them or get their approval, the site just requires a valid email address to get in.  A quick search on google will give you one of those.
These plans seem pretty amazing.  You get 500 anytime minutes, unlimited sprint pcs vision (ie data downloads, emails, im messages), unlimited night (starts at 9pm) and weekends, and unlimited picture mail for $30 a month!!  That’s right folks, unlimited data AND 500 minutes for only $30.  A plan like this through Verizon or normal Sprint plans would be $70.  From everything I have read, this is totally legit.  The only drawback I see is that you are required to sign a 2 year contract.  But with a plan like that at that cost, why would you leave?

So I’m now thinking I’ll go with the SERO option.  I’m going to do a little more homework before I make my decision, but I’m about 90% sure that is the way I’m going.  I’ve had Sprint for a number of years and have been very happy.  I only wanted to leave them because I wanted the cheap 700p through Verizon.  Now I can spend $200 more to get the 700p through Sprint, but save $480 a year in plan costs.

I’ll let you know how it goes…..

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