halcyoncmdr

Welcome to the US wireless game. I'd rather see everything switch over to standard networks technology and bands. Have the majority of sales setup like Europe. Contract free offers for everything with identical plans just at a lower price point since the company is not recouping cost for device subsidy, but you can choose to pay for the device entirely up front instead. None of this separate prepaid/postpaid garbage we have now with carrier subsidies being the majority to keep consumers "in line".

It just means that 5 towers were having issues in the immediately Tucson area. Oro Valley, Marana, Green Valley, Sahuarita, Catalina, etc. are all separate and not considered directly part of Tucson so they are split into a separate subsection on the Network Event Board for open network tickets, I didn't look at those the other day as I don't live there. hehe Some were just notices of Network Vision upgrades that may take longer than a day (I've seen tickets have ETR dates anywhere from 2-30 days out). Some were towers being completely down, voice, text, and data. One was specifically about a, EVDO data blocking issue. So data sessions were being blocked on the network side for some reason, could have been capacity, a bottleneck in backhaul, etc. where the tower was actively denying connections due to some issue.

They may have, I'll take a look and see what I can find next time I'm at work. I'm pretty sure I saw a file somewhere that actually spelled out exactly what types of devices used each PRL.

I didn't work today, but I know on Wednesday there were 5 tickets open for Tucson proper (read: nothing outside of Tucson/immediate county, Oro Valley, Marana, and outlying areas are under different network ticket dropdowns I didn't look at) about tower issues. Some were Network Vision upgrade notifications, some were entire site outages, one was a data block issue if I remember correctly.

I believe there are 6 or so different PRL "types" currently used, keeping corporate-specific PRLs out of the listing. Each should have the same naming convention xxx97 etc. 3G only 3G/4G WiMax 3G/4G LTE iPhone 4 (has its own due to differences in PRL design requirements, used to be the same as standard files but changed due to optimization) Aircards GSM World capable devices for flavoring as well I may be wrong on some of these, not at work currently to look at the PRL listing. Can't access S4GRU from behind the firewall... ironically it was blocked in the "sports" category. Can access ESPN and NBA though, yay licensing.

All Sprint-branded devices are Chinese made (ZTE, Huawei, etc.). Average Americans don't really trust the Chinese, so no Chinese phone advertising. P.S. It's made by ZTE.

Retail peons are told nothing of value.

Your place sounds like RF's worst nightmare.

Number portability is an inexact science unfortunately and relies more on the company it is coming from than the company it is going to. Landline ports regularly take anywhere from 1-10 days. Wireless ports are usually anywhere from 15 minutes to 4 days (those were the fun ones). As for 800mhz support questions, Sprint's official corporate stance currently is not to talk about the frequencies specific devices support. I'm assuming this is because they are deciding how to advertise this in the future. After all, advertising a domestic quad-band-phone (800/850/1900/2500) means it must be inferior to a sextuple-band phone (800/850/900/1800/1900/2500, incorporating int'l GSM here obviously). hehe

Experimentation! Ah the magical purple smoke. The beauties of being a tech in a corporate location... you make the ticket notes for exchange reason. Warranty doesn't matter for store demo devices, the store will always have a working one on hand. Doesn't matter if hte device is broken fro muse, intentionally by a customer, or stolen, it will be replaced. And that sounds like a DOA device if I ever saw one... hehe "Multiple batteries and leaving on charger for 2+ hours did not bring device back to life. Exchanging in store with stock on hand."

It's pretty much the same with any corporate vs franchise style company. Verizon has this issue as well according to some friends that work in a corporate store for vz. Any fast food franchise also can choose to not offer some special promotion. In major cities you won't notice this, but get a bit further out and many franchises don't have anything special, just the standard menu despite advertising. That's why the ads state it is at participating locations only.

I wonder if Belkin utilizes the Centercode Connect portals like many other companies do? Adobe, Dell, Cisco, Logitech, Google, etc. It appears it does based on Centercode's client list. hehe Centercode... http://www.centercode.com/ Centercode's OnlineBeta portal, for all programs not specifically managed by a large corporation... https://www.onlinebeta.com/login.html Cisco/Linksys beta portal.. https://beta.linksys.com/ I've done some testing for Cisco, Palm, Logitech, and some other smaller companies through opportunities sent from Centercode directly looking for new testers.

This is how it's supposed to work: You pay X amount extra to buyout the remainder of your contract and become eligible for your upgrade discount immediately. This amount varies according to the type of device you purchased subsidized last, and the amount of time left in your contract. For example, a $200 ETF Sanyo Vero will have a lower Upgrade Now cost than a $350 ETF HTC EVO Design at the same point in the contract. This Upgrade Now program cost will vary between $50 and $275, and is usually available starting 6 months into a contract up until the last month before upgrade eligibility (20 months now). You are required to utilize Sprint's buyback program to sell your old phone to Sprint, the amount of the buyback is directly credited towards your purchase in store that day. You can add additional buybacks if you want to decrease your out of pocket cost if you want, but they are not required for the Upgrade Now program. If your old phone is lost, you can still take advantage of the program now, but that old phone will be marked Lost/Stolen in the system and will never be eligible to be activated again (so you can't just say you "lost" your phone and then sell it elsewhere for more money than the Buyback program). This makes you eligible for the advertised discounted pricing on a phone, no additional discounts, just eligible for the advertised price as if you were upgrade eligible already. Any other additional promotions going on you would still qualify for, like additional discounts for adding a home Phone Connect, buying a Tablet as well, etc. they can stack together.

I have issues with Google services on my 50/50 business class cable connection at home sometimes, most often NOT at peak times. It's not Sprint's connection itself probably.

Of course it's unscientific, it relies on a person answering truthfully. Not only that, it relies on a person accurately describing themselves (we are human, this is physically impossible to due perfectly). It can give you a general idea however, that's all it was intended for.

Currently there isn't an official way through the website, you can post in the Community, but that is primarily meant for customers to assist and answer each other's questions (something posted in the Community but no one seems to understand, there are only a handful of Sprint employees in there to moderate).You can call or go into a store to report an issue. The new tool (Network Pinpoint) used for it allows specific marking of locations, addresses, intersections, etc. so the more information you have about the location, the more accurate the info they can use when the Network team gets to looking at it. I did bring this up as a suggestion a few months ago for consumer transparency and was told that systems were already being implemented to improve feedback like this. Then a few weeks ago the new Network Pinpoint tool was released to get feedback increasingly more up to date. The 12 year old system they used didn't cut it anymore obviously.

In addition, retail reps are there for sales and are paid commission. You ever wonder why some places are now advertising the fact their salesmen aren't paid on commission? It's because that means they are more likely to truly help you instead of just pushing a sale, or at least that's what many consumers believe, and from my experience seems to be true more often than not. Officially they are there to help customers with issues as well, but that isn't the main reason they are there. They are there to sell, it's retail. If you aren't buying anything, many will view you as wasting their time, time that could be better used selling something to someone and making them money. Not all reps are like this, many truly will help and give accurate info. However, those aren't the reps you will hear about, and those aren't the ones that will stick in your mind. Only the liars and pushy salesmen will stay in your mind because you didn't like it. Sales quotas have increased almost exponentially in the last several years. I started as a sales rep before switching to the tech side about 3 years ago so I've seen the changes happen over time. Welcome to corporate retail sales in America. Low training in a technical field because sales employee turnover is extremely high. Mostly high turnover caused by high sales quotas, high training costs, shareholders only caring about raw quarterly profit, and the fact that many consumers view retail employees as vermin beneath them. This is why I'm looking forward to the SoftBank purchase. The Japanese believe in long term gains over short term profit, essentially the opposite of Wall Street. They would rather invest in a long term outcome with greater profit overall than a short term gain. Wall Street shareholders want the highest profit possible in the shortest time, regardless of the negatives that come with it, they have no empathy, they essentially are psychopaths.

I can assure you that's not the case and would be stupid on top of it all. A faster connection means less congestion as the users are getting their information faster. If you do the same thing on 3G and 4G, the 4G will be more efficient, and thus better for not only you but the entire network as a whole. The issues come in with users wanting to do more since they can do it faster. That then adds to the overall network load. There is no advantage of keeping users on the 3G network however when 4G is available, none at all.

I wasn't referring to currently, I was referring to NV completion, or almost completion where only a handful of towers remain to be upgraded.

That's most customers honestly. If it works for them, they won't think twice about it, unless it's too expensive. The only ones that care about speed tests are e-Peen users, or those who aren't getting good speeds/latency. Both of which will be fixed with Network Vision on Sprint. As NV comes to completion I predict the negative comments about Sprint's network and speeds dying off rapidly. There will still be the few true issues with tower outages, etc. but the major complaints will be remedied.

Oh believe me, a lot of individual information for each subscriber is monitored and recorded for quality and diagnostic purposes. At least a rough network location (within a few hundred feet, enough for E911 service), The specific Cascade ID and sector you are connected to (cell site), data speeds on that site/sector, capacity on that site/sector, and dropped and blocked calls caused by network, device, and account issues just to name a few. The new Service Trender, Network Pinpoint and Network Event Board tools used by reps have varying amount of access to this information to help them triage and diagnose customer issues. Carrier IQ gave a lot more detailed information regarding what the handset was doing at the time of a drop/blocked call, a more fine location instead of just a rough area, and things like that. All of this was handled in the background, and sent in automatically as issues arose to help Sprint better manage the network and devices. Carrier IQ helped Sprint decide device roadmaps as well as they could see how people used their device,s the types of apps and sort of thing people used on their devices most often. All real world data, not based on subjective surveys, it was all raw objective information. The issues people had with Carrier IQ were two-fold: 1. The CIQ app itself allows almost entire control over a device. It can monitor everything happening on it, including keyboard actions, screen taps and swipes, network information, fine GPS location information, etc. Essentially it's the ultimate spyware application because it is in everything on the phone. Now, the US carriers that utilized it, including Sprint only used it for diagnostic and usage information. Specific monitoring of use and such were not utilized because that would be a violation of Sprint's privacy policies, the app could do it, but wasn't. The keyboard input monitoring could have been used temporarily to allow access to hidden menu systems, sort of like the ## and *#*# dialer codes on all Sprint phones but all information fro mthat was not sent, it was only stored locally temporarily. 2. People didn't bother to learn about CIQ and how it was actually being used. They heard what it could do and blew up about it. No matter all of the advantages it gave a carrier to get truly objective information about network and deivce triage/diagnosis and about how their customers really use their devices (rather than subjective survey responses and requests based on a fleeting human desire).

People dislike marketers, this isn't news. All they do is prey on people emotions and perceptions (it's their job of course). Not as much as lawyers, but that's probably just because of how much lawyers charge.

That would be an issue with PayPal then. All donations are handled by PayPal, so I would suggest contacting them about why it isn't being accepted (or your bank of course).

Perhaps someone forwarded their calls and put your number in instead of the one they wanted to. Not sure of a way to block that though.

To be fair... it is Kingman. :-P