[rambo47]

This is F***ED UP!

Supposedly, to activate or re-activate a BlackBerry on Sprint, a re-programming by Sprint is necessary. This has been the case for the last 2 months or so, according to a rep I spoke with yesterdeay. Did I just fall for some hooey from a less-than-savvy cs rep?

My Tour's trackball screwed up, again. I replaced it myself pretty easily about 6 months ago, curing the original problem with a replacement part from cnn.cn. Recently it would act sticky or lose side-to-side motion. Holding the ball down and blowing compressed air would fix it for a bit, but it was recurring more and more often. Time to swap it out. I couldn't get to it immediately so I thought I'd activate my Palm Pre for a few days. It would be nice to play with a different device, see what's changed with WebOS recently, and just play with that big beautiful screen.

Ugh! Re-activating the Pre was a minor saga. It had to be reprogrammed as well, but tech support walked me through it and my Google account restored my data easily. I don't know why Sprint even has that online "activate a new phone" option, because for me it's useless. Never works, and I always end up calling tech support. Well, after about 2 hours with the Pre I was pining for my BB Tour. The lag in the OS is unreal, the Contacts list sucks balls, and the calendar is crap. No invites from the calendar! If you want to send invites for an event you have to use the web access of your GMail account to create the event and send the invites from there. Palm has put out 4 updates to the OS since the Pre was released and still no invites without a workaround?! Blow me. And this is with the latest release of WebOS - 1.3.5.1. Maybe it will show up in 1.4 as they're promising some unnamed calendar update. As for now, however, it's still a FAIL.

I replace my BB trackball in about 10 minutes, eager to get back to the device that works the way I do. Back to the online MySprint "Activate a New Phone" wizard and it simply would not take. I double, triple, and quadruple-checked my MEID DEC number, but that wasn't the problem. It *seemed* to accept the change, but when it finished and said I should now activate my phone the process ground to a frustrating halt. I had full bars for signal strength but a test call returned the message that activation could not take place, call customer service. No data connection either. Oh, joy. I refreshed my computer browser on MySprint and was greeted with the Pre still listed as my current device.

So I call Sprint tech support, with whom I'm getting very friendly, work through the initial automated phone system (one of the banes of my existence), and get Maurice in New Orleans. He informs me the only way to activate a smartphone OF ANY KIND on Sprint now is to perform a wipe and let Sprint reprogram it remotely. Which also explains why I had such trouble getting my Pre to activate. Maurice tells me that allowing users to activate through the web interface was causing all kinds of havoc in the system and on users' phones. So we're back to the old way - call them to activate.

Has anyone else encountered this? I got it all done, restored from backup, and all is well. Minor pain in the butt re-activating some of my apps, but at least all my data was restored. And I'm back using my BlackBerry Tour.

[Noodle22]

Sounds more difficult than it needs to be. If they offer a supposedly easy solution that does not work, why don't they pull it from their site?

Btw, I love your rants I believe you did one about being sent the wrong box, and then a broken box, and then a box that was still on someone else's account....

[rambo47]

My rants come from the heart. The real magic would be a video of me stomping around the house, gnashing my teeth and scaring the Shih-Tzu. I'm happy to report that all the cable boxes are functioning normally. If not it would be a bad day to work for Verizon FiOS.

Sprint didn't have this online device swap until the middle of last year. Apparently it was causing havoc from day one, both for users who ended up with corrupted devices and for Sprint themselves losing customer account settings. So now it still works, but only for dumb phones. I've given up looking for signs of sentient life within Sprint. From their policies toward long-time customers to their advertising campaigns, they seem like a gaggle of misbehaving chimps.

[southwestcomm]

Manual programming is not necessary for a newly activated device nor a device being reactivated. Reactivating a previously used device does require a wipe since the device will have the MSID information from the previous use. Other than wiping all you need to do is turn the device on and let it auto-program.

I swap my own devices so I don't know why they are telling you that.

[rambo47]

According to their "playbook" they simply read from, the only way to start the process is to get the device to wipe. I did it, but it sure sounded a little fugazey to me. I do believe I've been had!

[southwestcomm]

I'm curious if the "playbook" correctly identifies the steps for each BB type?

Next time you need to make a switch PM me and I'll make it smoother for you.

[rambo47]

Thank you. I certainly will pm you! Most carriers are woefully lacking when it comes to reps who are knowledgeable about BlackBerrys.