One of the mistakes I made in 2007 was re-upping with Sprint for yet another 2-year-contract with the upgrade to a new phone back in January. I’d been a Sprint customer since 1998, having gone through at least 5 different phones. As of today, I’m free of Sprint! It might be difficult to imagine how one could be so happy to be rid of a cell phone service provider. I think I captured some of my frustration earlier this year, but their customer service throughout the years has been horrible.

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So I signed up with Verizon, whom Consumer Reports ranks as the top service provider. For the type of phone I need, there’s not much difference between one provider and another. I need reliable customer service. The January 2008 issue of Consumer Reports cites their reader survey showing that only about 40% of wireless customers received good customer service from their provider. However, with last-place Sprint, that percentage was just 20%. Some people may be happy with Sprint and may have even been fortunate enough to either never have needed customer service or have had a satisfactory experience with them. I was not so fortunate, I can’t warn people against starting new service with Sprint enough, although after this post, I probably won’t need to so public ever again.

I’m paying the $200 early-termination fee, but I’m fine with that, because I just got over $200 back from Costco for returning my old phone. (My purchase was grandfathered into Costco’s old cell phone return policy; they’ve since changed their policy to just 90 days).