I have been with Sprint for 6 years and had gotten pretty feed up with them. I called them the other day when my most recent 2 year agreement was up to tell them to cancel my account.
Of course, they're all bothered by this and they called a couple of days later and wanted to discuss the reasons why I wanted to cancel.
I basically told them that they have too many dropped calls and I find a lot of dead areas, including the middle of my kitchen (must be the radon
). I also told them that they do NOTHING for their current customers and all the best savings/deals on plans and phones are always focused on the new customers but not current ones.
So I told them that I had decided to go with another carrier because I could get phone X and Plan X for a much lower price. I also said that I had decided to start dealing with cellualr companies the way I do credit card companies (i.e. changing ever 6-12 months for a lower APR); thus I would change my cellular company every 2 years since the cellular industry always seems to respect the new customer more than the existing customer.
Well, I must have said the right things because Sprint listened and ended up giving me a $649 Treo for $199 with no mail-in rebate and they billed it directly to my monthly bill and sent me the phone by UPS in 3 days.
Guess honestly (and bitching) does work sometimes.