Can't send or recieve new Sprint calls in 4 mile area of my house!

[RandomWhim]

I'm a Sprint PCS user, and for the 4th consecutive day now I am unable to send or recieve new calls when at home or in a 3 or 4 mile radius of my house.

When I've driven a few miles from home and started a new call, I can then go home and stay on the call. But if I hang up at home and try to make a new call....nothing.

My phone says "connecting" for 10 or 20 seconds, and then either says "SVS service unavaillible, try analog" or else goes back to the main clock screen.

We've always had fine signal in this area, and even have full bars when we try to make these "connecting" calls.

Numerous calls to Sprint have turned up nothing.

Has anyone here had a similar experience?

[Gamer03]

I have had a similar experience like this with Sprint (of which they eventually waived the $300 (since we had two lines)).

If you used to have a good enough Sprint signal to make and receive calls, then either your phone is bad, or Sprint moved the position of the panels (like they did in my area). Your tower is problem not functioning properly (panel(s) could be broken)).

Are these problems only inside, or can you get a marginal signal outside of your house?

Here is a thread that I started with my problem with Sprint:

http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/showthread.php?t=6454 (How Do We Get Another Carrier to Pay Our ETF? Is It Possible?)

Call Sprint and tell them your problem and have them issue a trouble ticket (tech. support) for the tower that serves your neighborhood. Tell them exactly when it started happening, etc. etc.

If they still don't want to issue a trouble ticket, have them connect you to their supervisor.

What kind of phone do you have RandomWhim? I had a Samsung VGA 1000 when I had these types of problems.

Just ask (nicely) Sprint to issue a trouble ticket and they will usually come out and check your tower and send a guy to your house and have him check his signal outside.

Good luck.

Let us know how it turns out.

Welcome to WA RandomWhim.

[larry]

Sounds like a tower went down with techincal issues or the T1's got flooded out. It's probably only a temporary thing. Keep complaining about it to Sprint and get a trouble ticket number.

[RandomWhim]

Thanks for all the help.

I ended up calling one of my local Sprint Stores to see if they would help me open a ticket, and they said they've had all sorts of calls from people living along the same major road as me.

Apperantly, one of our local telcos cut some underground cabling, and Sprint is on it repairing the damage and getting our tower back online. They're saying it should be back up in 24 hours. Here's hoping!

[Gamer03]

Great.

I am glad to hear that.

Keep us posted.

Good luck.

[larry]

You should call and get a credit from customer service for each day you were without service. Tell them a tower went down because of an underground cable incident and you can't use your phone at all. They should at least give you some bonus minutes to use.

[Gamer03]

Larry, does Sprint really do that?

Did you ever have an outage and had a credit or bonus minutes given to you from Sprint?

[larry]

Yes they do and I have.

[Tony E!]

Originally Posted by Gamer03 Larry, does Sprint really do that? Did you ever have an outage and had a credit or bonus minutes given to you from Sprint?

I have gotten bonus mins from Sprint, the last time i was down to about 10 mins, they gave me 100 courtesy mins.

[Gamer03]

The last time I had a problem with Sprint (I hope everyone remembers that thread ), Sprint told me I could have two months of free Vision on both of our lines......

But that wouldn't have helped us, since we couldn't receive a signal within three miles of our house.

But at least they offered to give it to us.

[Gamer03]

Originally Posted by Tony E [/b] I have gotten bonus mins from Sprint, the last time i was down to about 10 mins, they gave me 100 courtesy mins.

Cool.

I wonder if all carriers do that?

[agentHibby]

Verizon can give you 100 extra minutes for $45

[Gamer03]

Originally Posted by agentHibby Verizon can give you 100 extra minutes for $45

100 extra minutes would cost me $40.

[Shizam76]

Originally Posted by Gamer03 Cool. I wonder if all carriers do that?

The only thing Cingular has done for me in the 4 years I have had them, is credit my bill plus some due to a billing error. I switched from a HOME TDMA plan to the promo NATION TDMA plan, back in 2002 and had been roaming. My bill was 250 some dollars. I called and something wasn't coded right or something, for billing. She credited my bill the errored amount, PLUS an extra 150 bucks or so....I didn't have to pay a bill for like 4 months!

[Gamer03]

Originally Posted by Shizam76 The only thing Cingular has done for me in the 4 years I have had them, is credit my bill plus some due to a billing error. I switched from a HOME TDMA plan to the promo NATION TDMA plan, back in 2002 and had been roaming. My bill was 250 some dollars. I called and something wasn't coded right or something, for billing. She credited my bill the errored amount, PLUS an extra 150 bucks or so....I didn't have to pay a bill for like 4 months!

Wow.

That was nice of Cingular....but they were the ones that screwed up in the first place.

But at least they fixed the problem.