How to get out of your Sprint contract for free on January 1st. (buying a house)

[TexasCovertCarry]

So, work took away my Blackberry and after having one for about 6 years I was addicted to the ease of use, functionality, features etc. Ive got a generic Sprint phone for my business and thought I would go down and see what it would cost to get an upgrade to a Blackberry.

$569

Thats not a typo.

Ridiculous.

So I go back and forth with the rep, trying to get to some kind of deal and the only thing they would let me do is graciously allow me $75 off the RETAIL price of a phone in February.

I even offered to add a 3rd line to my account to get the new phone deal they offer everyone else and was told that I would have to keep the 3rd phone regardless of what I did with the contract. Unreal. So, to cancel my contract was going to cost me $160 and I told them I would see them in February to take care of the cancellation.

I left and went to ATT and spoke with them. Ill be able to get an iPhone with full data plan and 450 rollover minutes for $85 a month. Oh and they were kind enough to inform me that Sprint is raising some administrative fees on January 1 and you can get out of your contract for free due to this. I looked into it and its true. I wonder why Sprint didnt tell me about that...

http://consumerist.com/2009/12/sprint-fee-increase-is-your- chance-to-escape-without-early-termination-fee.html

[rd2007]

Good info, but $85/month is pretty expensive. I have unlimited data, texting, picture/video mail, and 1500 minutes/month on four phones for $124/month after all taxes and fees (which I absolutely hate BTW), but that's with Sprint.. you need to get to the you really pissed me off people. They can make you a hella deal like I got. That ended up being free data on two phones and $8/month on the other two phones and I also got the Best Buy price when I bought them (free) and got to trade them in early.

[nicholasa101]

thanks for the info

[LindaGrace]

I can't believe that cell phone companies still operate like this. It's insane that they can still lock you into a contract for months/years and charge out the ass for a new phone.

[rd2007]

the contract is normally used as a subsidy of the new phone. Otherwise the new phone will cost you a lot of money. It just depends on which end you want to get it from (figuratively of course).

[hadleyzoo]

I hate Sprint. I was a victim of ID theft about 5 years ago and one thing the crook did was open a Sprint cell phone account in my name. When I discovered this (because *I* received an overdue $1,000 cell phone bill; we were also in the process of still moving, buying a house etc so the mail caught up with me about 2 months after the account was opened) I contacted Sprint. The account was closed, sent to their fraud department who took a bunch of information from me. When I asked for copies of the cell phone records (I was going to start calling every number and find out who robbed us in Utah (that's how all this started)---because our investigator there was worthless)---get this...they said they couldn't give me copies of the records and tried to cite the privacy act and they couldn't release the info because since the account wasn't mine, but rather the CROOK WHO ROBBED MY FAMILY, they had to protect his privacy. I understand the laws and the privacy stuff and I get that...but do you really think that the identity theft victim whose personal information had been compromised really wanted to hear that lame excuse?

They could be the last cell phone company on earth, and I would go without...although my daughter might have something to say about that.