Get Out of Sprint Free

hyades1 writes in to let us know that Sprint has extended to Jan. 31 the time in which subscribers can switch carriers without paying an early termination fee. "Last month we learned that Sprint was increasing its administrative fee to $0.75, giving customers until January 1 of this year to back out without a penalty. It seems that $0.75 wasn't going to cut it as Sprint has raised its fee yet again, this time to $0.99. Customers now have through January 31 to sever ties sans-ETF, so if you missed the boat last month you're in luck. Though some customer care reps apparently aren't yet aware of the change, we did confirm it with Sprint so keep trying and as always, contacting them via chat seems to go a bit more smoothly than calling them up."

Virgin mobile...

[samriel]

Virgin Mobile raised text and speech pay-as-you-go rates with the only warning being, get this, at text message which costs YOU to recieve. Where's my back-out date?

Can I cancel agreement and stay on sans-contract?

[zachtib]

Does anyone know if I can use this to end my 2 year agreement but continue my Sprint service? I don't plan on switching carriers, but I would like to be able to sign a new agreement for an upgrade in a few months when the Pre comes out.

Re:ETF is only 99 cents?

[Anonymous Coward]

My Verizon "plan" is $43.99 per month, but my bill comes with $8.22 in taxes, surcharges, and fees. That's an 18.7% tax.

Re:CDMA

[Anonymous Coward]

im with sprint because they are the only carrier that gives me unlimited phone as modem on my $50 blackberry plan.

yep cheaper to buy a blackberry and tether it than to buy and unlimited data plan with a modem.

Re:CDMA

[Solandri]

Many of Sprint's plans have free roaming. If yours does and you're in an area with poor reception, try switching your phone to roaming only. Verizon is one of Sprint's roaming partners (so was Alltel, but Verizon bought them). So usually you can get a decent signal anywhere you could with the other carriers. If you don't switch to roaming-only, the phone tries to connect to a Sprint network even if its signal is almost nonexistent while the Verizon signal is strong.

Do NOT do this if you're near Canada or Mexico. If you end up roaming on an international network, you get to pay international rates. And getting it cleared up with Sprint's customer service could take forever.

The original CDMA services were rolled out by Sprint and Verizon using subcontractors to set up the towers. CDMA was relatively new and untested, so they relied on specs from Qualcomm to design those networks. The specs turned out to be rather optimistic. As a result the towers in certain older regions are spaced too far apart, leading to many areas with poor service. Verizon has been pretty good about moving or setting up new towers. Sprint has not. But if you can roam on Verizon's towers, the problem goes away.