I don’t know if this will work for everyone with a Sprint cellular account, but I have been able to make it work twice now in the past 6 months on my company’s business account.
I have 3 cell phone lines through my small business account with Sprint and I have had to upgrade 2 of the phones in the past 6 months- 1 because it got dropped off of a marina dock and got wet, and one because I simply needed to upgrade my own phone for something with newer features/better call quality.
Both times I had absolutely NO success using the Sprint website to upgrade my phone. Trust me, the website stinks. You can never log in as a business customer and I think they do not use a cross platform between their online account management tools and the phone services such as the online store. It’s horrible, do not even try. Secondly, the service number is no use either; they simply pass you off to another department when you need a new phone. And do not get me started on the actual business-dedicated support via phone, email, or local reps. In my experience, they are all pretty useless.
But the good news here is the actual phone sales/upgrade toll-free line (800-SPRINT1) is better at providing you new phones than any other method. On my latest upgrade (my own personal phone), they even went so far as to take my information and call me back when the phone I was looking for was not immediately available- the new Samsung ACE.
It gets better… In addition to the friendly and helpful demeanor of the reps on the sales toll-free line both times, they also converted the mail-in rebates on both upgrades into instant rebates and took the cost of the phones down to the promotional prices immediately- i.e., no hassles filling out a form, providing proof of purchase, and waiting 6-8 weeks for a rebate check! One more thing- on the Samsung ACE upgrade I just did this week, I asked for the instant rebate conversion of the mail-in rebate because I knew they did it for me before (hey, if you don’t ask, you’ll never know, right?). Anyway, ON TOP OF THAT, the rep even told me he would STILL give me the mail-in rebate in my new phone shipment and that the instant rebate would be listed in my next month’s bill as “customer retention” service.
So the final price of my new “ACE” looks like this: $449 retail- $150 promotional - $100 customer retention -$100 mail-in rebate = $99!
Wow. From a company that usually gets poor CRM ratings and from which I personally have had some below-average experiences with along the way, I have been impressed with at least the tool-free phone sales line.
MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) - The New England Patriots won the Super Bowl and ended the season with a perfect 19-0 record - at least it looks that way in Nicaragua.
The NFL donated 290 Patriots hats and an equal number of team jerseys trumpeting the slogans "Super Bowl Champions, 19-0" to impoverished children from two small communities in southern Nicaragua.
Thursday's gifts could not change history - the Patriots lost the Feb. 3 game to the New York Giants 17-14 - but they made a lot of youngsters in the communities of San Gregorio and Buena Vista very happy, said Miriam Diaz, spokeswoman for the humanitarian organization World Vision, which arranged the donation with the NFL.
"They (Patriots) lost, but the children won," Diaz said.
The only "football" most of the children know is soccer, but they were very enthusiastic about the U.S. version of the game once the rules were explained to them, she said.
"They were very happy to receive the hats and jerseys," Diaz said. "They said they did not expect such a surprise."
Neither did the Patriots.
