Cellphones: March 2006 Archives

A couple weeks ago, Sprint PCS invited me to participate in its "Sprint Ambassador Program," a program under which they give you a free phone and unlimited use of a premium plan for six months, no strings attached. I received the phone today, and tried to use it as a modem, which the program literature suggested was possible.

Although this story ended happily, it wasn't before I was reminded, at length, of why I left Sprint PCS back in the late 90s: their legendarily bad customer service.

The phone, a Samsung A920, arrived today, pre-activated. I had some fun exploring its various features, like music downloads (free for Ambassador participants, $2.50(!) for regular customers), video streaming, web browsing, etc.

But when I tried to set it up as a modem (via Bluetooth) and ran into questions, I quickly encountered Sprint's frustrating customer service apparatus, still spotty after all these years.

All I needed was the phone number to enter into my Bluetooth setup. I thought this information might be on their website. But it turned out I needed a password so I could log on to confirm I was signed up for data service, etc. According to the informational card shipped with my phone, this password defaults to the last four digits of my SSN. Easy enough, right? But of course it didn't work.

After a few tries, I clicked the "I don't know my password" link. The resulting page told me it couldn't reconcile my number with my password. I already knew that. Time to call my old friends at Sprint PCS customer service...

Dial *2, tell the robots I need tech support, get a CSR (not a tech guy) on the phone. I tell him I just got the phone today via the Ambassador program, I'm trying to use it as a modem, and I need a password so I can logon to the site and add that service to my plan. It didn't take long for the conversation to turn Kafka-esque as these conversations always do:

CSR: "I need your password before I can give you that information, sir."
Me: "Um. What I was saying is that according to this informational card that came with the phone, my password is supposed to be the last four digits of my social security number. Those numbers didn't work, so I don't know what my password is."
CSR: "Sir, I can't give you the information you need unless you can give me the password for this account."

Start over. Finally he determines my account is a business account, so he transfers me over to that department. I tell the new guy my situation and what I need.

Business CSR: "Who is the point of contact for your account."
Me: "I don't know...Me?"
Business CSR: "I'm seeing this is a large account with a large number of phones, so you need to get in touch with the point of contact for this account."
Me: "I think the point of contact is you. Like I said, you guys sent me the phone...you know, for review purposes."
Business CSR: "I understand."

Puts me on hold for two minutes, comes back and tells me I need to call ANOTHER number: (888) 296-8806, which apparently is the Ambassador hotline or whatever. Having been down these "special number" paths before, I asked him twice if they would be open right then (Saturday, 5 pm EST). He says yes.

I call the number. Guess what? Dead air. Nothing. Not a ring, not a busy signal, nothing.

Hurray for Sprint PCS! Consistently offering crappy customer service for almost 10 years!

After this, I tried the "I don't know my password" link on the website again, and this time it worked! Apparently they did something to resolve the purgatorial status of my account, and I got an SMS with my new pw. The pw worked.

So at this point, I figured all I need is the phone number to enter in my Bluetooth setup dialog. Can't find that in any of the documentation, online or otherwise, so that's another call to customer service. This time, I get a CSR who tells me my demo plan doesn't support "phone as modem" features but transfers me to a tech anyway. The tech -- who is named Roy (I think) -- is really good -- tells me what number to type in to the Bluetooth dialog (#777), and tells me to give it a shot. No dice.

He then discovers the special Ambassador service number, and gives it to me, but I tell him I already tried it and all I got was dead air. He tries it and gets dead air, too. He says he'd look into it, and I tell him I'd email the the Ambassador people and see if they could get me set up with a data plan, which at this point I still thought I didn't have (since that's what the CSR told me). Not an ideal solution, but at least he was trying to be helpful and knew what he was talking about.

About 10 minutes later, a tech named Jeff called my PCS phone. He told me he had talked to Roy and wanted to help me get my phone working as a modem.

He explained the root cause of my inability to get online with the phone. This is really funny:

Sprint gave all these Ambassador phones a username like "ambassadorNNNN@sprintpcs.com," where NNNN is a unique four-digit number. When you access the web via the phone's browser, it sends that username and your pw to their server and logs you on. BUT when you try to access the data service using the same phone as a modem, it sends a different username (e.g., ambassadorNNNN@modem.sprintpcs.com). Unfortunately, their system prohibits usernames with obscene words in them. Can you see where this is going? They system parsed the username "ambassadorNNNN", found the "obscene" word "ASS" in it, and refused to provision the account.

The solution Jeff came up with? He changed my username to "ambasadorNNNN" (one 's') and tried the provisioning again. It worked. The only remaining problem was that I then couldn't connect to the internet via the phone's browser, but that situation resolved itself a short time later.

So to summarize: To use my phone as a modem, I talked to five people at Sprint, two of whom (Jeff and Roy) seemed to know what they were talking about, used one faulty website, was wrongly told my plan did not include a data component, and was directed to a dead phone line. All as a member of this Ambassador program.

Please note that I am the last person on Earth to expect special treatment as a member of a premium group (especially one I'm not paying for). I just think it's funny that Sprint had such trouble providing simple information to a member of a group they had internally designated as high-profile.

Finally, the data service, which I will probably be writing about some time in the future, is very good and feels very fast. I will do some formal upload/download tests later and post the results.