NEWS: NY Agency Wants Sprint to Pay Customers

"Elmo P. Shagnasty" <elmop@nastydesigns.com> wrote in message
news:elmop-7C2ED4.00311314072007@nntp1.usenetserver.com...
> In article <2e6g93l8rg8t7bertkqtsp44f7cukmu3oe@4ax.com>,
> Paul Miner <pminer@elrancho.invalid> wrote:
>
>> >Not every contract is legal.
>>
>> I guess the flip side to your logic is that not every contract is
>> illegal. Who cares, it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
>
> Are you saying that the Sprint contract is legal?
>
> Are you a lawyer?

Did you get a letter from Sprint??
>

On 2007-07-18, Ness_net <richard@nomore.damn.spam.nessnet.com> wrote:
> Well Johnny, I LIVE here.
> This is not 2nd hand info.
>
> Note, I didn't say their entire system(s) were down.
>
> But, very certainly in this area, they were. VZW was
> the only system that stayed up, here. The only one with
> a gen, keeping things humming... Battery plants just don't
> last for days, more like hours.

I was in Boynton Beach, FL during and after hurricane Frances in 2004.
No Verizon cell sites there had permanent generators that I noticed (I've
yet to see a generator at an isolated cell site where I live in California,
for that matter).

Despite this, after the first day, Verizon was the only wireless
carrier operating where I was for the 4 or 5 days the power was out.
While coverage was spotty in the town Verizon did have portable generators
deployed at the cell sites along the freeway close to where I was staying.
My Sprint and T-Mobile phones, on the other hand, were useless anywhere
north of Fort Lauderdale (where the power was still on), as was my
brother-in-law's Cingular phone.

Dennis Ferguson

Dennis Ferguson wrote:

> Despite this, after the first day, Verizon was the only wireless
> carrier operating where I was for the 4 or 5 days the power was out.
> While coverage was spotty in the town Verizon did have portable generators
> deployed at the cell sites along the freeway close to where I was staying.
> My Sprint and T-Mobile phones, on the other hand, were useless anywhere
> north of Fort Lauderdale (where the power was still on), as was my
> brother-in-law's Cingular phone.

I read somewhere that after the 2005 hurricane season Cingular did
decide to begin installing back-up power on more sites.

Verizon seems to be almost anal about their network's reputation, while
Cingular didn't seem to care until recently.

My mom's in South Florida, and amazingly her land line was fine after
Wilma in 2005, which hit where they live very hard, and they don't have
underground utilities. No electricity for five days though. Their
Cingular phone didn't work. Now they're on T-Mobile, but fortunately
haven't had the opportunity to test the back-up capability.

Fair enough -- I didn't realize you were speaking of only one tower.

On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:09:14 -0700, "Ness_net"
<richard@nomore.damn.spam.nessnet.com> wrote in
<qvKdneDazPHlPQDbnZ2dnUVZ_hadnZ2d@giganews.com>:

>Well Johnny, I LIVE here.
>This is not 2nd hand info.
>
>Note, I didn't say their entire system(s) were down.
>
>But, very certainly in this area, they were. VZW was
>the only system that stayed up, here. The only one with
>a gen, keeping things humming... Battery plants just don't
>last for days, more like hours.
>
>"John Navas" <spamfilter1@navasgroup.com> wrote in message news:u66r939pjpaobke07bb6l0450fo4qnot5k@4ax.com...
>> On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:41:21 -0700, "Ness_net"
>> <richard@nomore.damn.spam.nessnet.com> wrote in
>> <-JqdnRvbn4Ei8gDbnZ2dnUVZ_vqpnZ2d@giganews.com>:
>>
>>>Just FYI, when Seattle had that spell of bad weather last winter,
>>>it sure was nice to have that big 'ol gen at the VZW site nearby pumping
>>>out the juice - and the site staying up the whole time. The GSM carriers
>>>(and Sprint) were LONG off the air.
>>
>> Not according to people I know in that area.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>

"prc2u1" <prc2u1@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:HEVli.6858$rL1.200@newssvr19.news.prodigy.net ...
> I work in cellular sales and it is amazing the lies people tell to get what
> they want. My boss told me when I started....80% of customers are liar's! I
> thought he was crazy. Now I know he is right.

I very much doubt it's 80%. I submit to you that what your boss told you is
an example of a businessman lying.

:-)

Of course, there are plenty of customers who lie, just are there are plenty of
salesmen that do. Customers are usually motivated by wanting to converve
their money, whereas salesmen are motivated by wanting more money. Really the
same thing...

Regarding the original topic... I'd be quite surprised if any court found that
cancellation fees in the "generic" case of the customer just deciding they
wanted to switch carriers were illegal. Companies have had similar contracts
for many decades (probably centuries), and it's a pretty reasonable setup --
in exchange for a significant up-front discount on, e.g., a phone, you
guarantee me that you'll keep subscribing for a certain period of time. If
such contracts are deemed illegal, it'll just make even the cheapest cell
phone $100 and high-end PDA phones more like $500... and I guarantee you'll
hear plenty of people then whining about _that_.

---Joel