For activation Verizon is spot on. Automated activation, done in 2 minutes or less whether you're a new customer or an upgrade. The last activation I tried with Sprint I got transferred 4 times to different reps, then when I finally get someone who sounds like they know what they are doing, they don't set up anything for data.

Even when I tried setting up a regular cell phone it took them an hour because they didn't know there was a Sprint Basic Plan.

When I was trying to activate the cell phone, while I was on hold for an hour and a half, I went to a Sprint store to see if they could help. The guy working there had Verizon for his service.

I havent made but maybe a few calls to vzw but I go into the stores a bit just to ask questions and I have always been treated like I am the number one priority.

nice picture dude

from my experiences...they do everything for you short of sexual favors haha

The curve rocks!! I hate to give it up. The data is too slow for me (I tether too) and I get a 20% discount at VZ. Hopefully, we will get a curve sometime in our lifetime...

If I had the ability to tether, I might have made a different choice (i.e., favoring G3). Unfortunately, with the IT policy that I live with, "no tethering".. so it was not part of my criteria.

Great VZW customer service? Sit Dawg, Sit!
 

Dawg, I enjoy you rposts and you have helped to teach me a lot about Bberries. Having said that, please realize that even though you always receive great CS a VZW, that is not the case with many, many people.

I say this because I work for a 21-year old reseller located across the street from one of the largest Verizon retail stores in the country (26th and Wilshire, Santa Monica, CA). We gain new customer every day because of hour-long waits, dropped service calls, etc, etc, etc. I know bad service isn't the case for all VZW customers (sounds like you get great service), but there are people who have terrible experiences with VZW every day. I also understand that the same may be said for other carriers,

We resell for all carriers and we spend time with everybody from CS to regional mngrs, etc,etc. From the top down, i can tell you that customer service is not a major part of their corporate plan. I wouldn't sound so confident if I hadn't witnessed this attitude at nearly level of the organization. Don't get me started on their wholesale vs retail.

They have the best network (overall) and they know it-service comes 2nd. Sorry for the mini rant, but I respect your opinions on a lot of things and to see you defend VZW on post after post breaks my heart! They probably have a note in your file that tells the operator to take extra care of you.

Thanks for all the info over the years but realize that everybody does not get treated the way you do from VZW CS.

I am gong to concur with Dawg on this one. I have had VZW for my person phone for about 7 or 8 years. Nothing but fantastic service on their part.

As a matter of fact, they have bumped my NE2 several times for me. I was only 6 months into my new contract and was able to get the 8830 fro $99. Cant beat that.

Gibber my friend......
 

that IS a great deal!

Thats cool I understand your point and I know that not everyone gets great service. I dont know why it would break your heart for me to post my great experiences. I am sure alot of ppl can say the same about all the carriers but why cant I defend my carrier like the others defend theirs. I have had such lousy service from others I am excited to tell the world what great service I am now getting.

If you dont belive how terrible Sprint and nextel were just ask my family everytime I called by the time I got off the phone I needed a nitro pill my Blood was boiling so bad.

Had to chime in.......mScorecard is absolutely the best!!!

Wirelessly posted (8830: BlackBerry8830/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

I could go into past experiences with all carriers, but its pointless, I can remember att roaming, sprint dropping calls just cause the wind changed directions, nextel 2 ways tdma's breakup, att's lack of fixing a dead spot for over ten year, though on one hand I can count the three dropped calls in six years I had on vz ever with about 3 to 4000 min a month avg usage, but then joe down the block might not have the same experience. Why? Simple, different people different situations in all it comes down to personal preferences and no one universal item will ever satisfy every single person. Sort a like cars, some drive toyota's others BMW's bottom line they all do the same thing allow you to get from point a to b but its still a personal preference who likes what.
So carry on but I do think ya are beating a dead horse imo.
P.s sorry if this looks like a wall of text still getting used to my bb and this really small reply box

I have not tried this on the BB -- or even on the palm for about 5 years
(I pretty much gave up golf when my family grew.. I have four kids and spend my weekends with them).
But I really liked intelligolf on my palm pilot about 5 years ago.

IntelliGolf - #1 Golf Scoring and GPS Software (TM) for Pocket PCs, Palm and Treo handhelds, Windows Mobile, Sony Ericsson, Nokia smartphones, and Blackberry

I plan to start playing gold again when my kids get to a point when they no longer want to spend weekends with me.

Yup, just do a Google search on "I hate Verizon Wireless" and you'll find numerous people who haven't had a spiritual experience with VZW CS. I think you will find this is true with all the other carriers as well.

I just tried to upgrade my Nextel 7520 to the Sprint 8830 and had absolutely the worst customer service experience I have ever encountered. This is my first post here so I'm sure some will discount what I have to say. But I am 53 years old and at one time I was a manager in a call center. For something to rank as the worst customer service ever takes an awful lot for someone like me. Sorry in advance this is a long post and is truly a rant.

I bought the phone from Tele-Sales and that part went fairly well. Phone arrived very quickly. The problem started when I tried to activate the phone. First phone call, the woman tried for about 30 minutes to get my account setup and was having problems. She finally stated that she needed to reboot her PC to attempt again. She put me on hold and after being on hold for about 20 minutes I got dumped back into the queue.

Next woman tried and she was also having problems. She spent about 20 minutes trying and she tried to put me on hold and disconnected me. I spent another 15 minutes in the queue when I called back and a 3rd rep tried, wasting about 20 minutes. She put me on hold for about 10 minutes and finally told me that she would need to do some research and call me back in an hour.

She did eventually call back and informed me that the problem was my split billing. Basically my company pays for the data portion of the phone and I pay for the voice with both being billed separately. She said that the data portion had to be canceled before the voice part could be canceled. And the only person that could cancel the data part was our corporate contact. I couldn't do it.

Now, I knew about the split billing obviously. And I was told by the rep at Tele-Sales that I would have to kill my Nextel account and recreate a new account on Sprint. I informed every rep I talked to about this at the beginning of the call. But this was the first I heard that I had to cancel the data portion first and that it would have to be done by the company. But I accepted that, took the special phone number that I was told to call and prepared to get it done the next morning.

That's when things got really ugly. I had the woman who is our contact call the special number and stuck around while she made the call and listened dumbfounded as she was told that they didn't see any data plan on the phone. Finally after about 10 minutes of this I asked to speak with the guy directly and we went round and round for a bit. Finally the woman handed me the corporate account number and the guy was able to locate my name on that account and see the data plan.

He then mashed his keyboard for about 10 minutes and said, "OK, I need the password on the account." Well I didn't have it and my corporate contact didn't have it. So she made a few phone calls and finally found it. We gave it to the rep, he verified that it was correct, proceeded to mash the keyboard for about 10 more minutes and then says, "OK, I can't do anything to actually cancel the account, you need to talk to Corporate Customer Service." HUH!! What was I just doing for the last 45 minutes? Why was I even talking to this guy if he couldn't do anything?

I finally get the number I'm supposed to call and inform this guy that I'm not going to tie up this woman's phone any longer and would call from my own desk. I call the number and the person I talk to tells me that all the info I got previously was wrong. I didn't need to create a new Sprint account because all Sprint accounts were being transitioned to the Nextel billing system. So she starts to work on it and he call gets dropped. Call back again and the next rep contradicts what the last rep just told me. I spend 20 minutes on the phone with here giving her all sorts of information and answering security question after security question. She gets through the whole thing and then tells me it will be 3 to 5 working days for the data portion to be moved to my account and she can't continue the activation till that's done.

At this point I was livid. After informing her that this was unacceptable she suggested that I just activate the new phone with a new number and wait to port the number until the accounts are merged. Fine, I don't really care at this point. Of course, she can't handle that, I have to be transferred again and wait in the queue a little while longer. Finally get a rep, attempt to explain this whole convoluted mess and start the process.

The only problem is, this rep has no clue what a Blackberry is. She repeatedly asks me for the phone number on the new phone because all phones are shipped already activated and I just need to type in the last 4 digits of my SSN. Yea, obviously not the case with this phone. But I continue on and we finally get to choosing plans. And she has no idea about the BB data plan. She tells me the data plan is $15 a month. I politely inform her that this is not the case for the BB and she has no idea what I'm talking about. I walk her through the order process on the website so she can see where the data plan is listed and she tells me I only need that plan if I want to tether. And in the middle of this conversation, she drops the call.

At this point, I'd had it. I'd spent over 5 hours on the phone trying to get this thing going and I was done. I call back and tell them I want to return the phone and why. The guy assures me he can get it activated. I told him that I'd give him 10 minutes and if it wasn't done in 10 minutes it was over. Needless to say, he didn't make the 10 minutes. I stand firm and tell him I'm canceling. He then tells me I have to call a different number for that.

I call, get stuck in a queue, finally get an answer and am told I need to call a different number. Call that number, get stuck in another queue. Wait and wait and wait, call drops. Call back, another queue. I finally give up, I've now wasted 6 hours and I need to get some work done. I wait till I get home and call them back to setup the return.

AND THINGS GET WORSE I finally get a rep and she tells me that I can return it to a local store to get my credit right away. I give her all the info, print out the return email and head to the store where I am promptly informed that they don't take Tele-Sales returns. What! The website says this store accepts them, the phone rep says they accept them and the paper I have in my hand says they accept them.

I go back to my car and call the return department again and demand that they call the store to find out why they won't take the return. The rep informs me that she can't call them because they can't make phone calls. I remind her that she works for a phone company that the idea that she can't make a phone call is absurd. Of course, I know the reality is that I'm talking to a call center in India and she probably can't. But at this point, that's not my problem, it's hers. I ask to talk to a supervisor and finally get one. Spend a long time getting the same story that she too can't make a phone call. Finally she admits that she can, but needs to go back to her office because she went to the reps phone to take my call. She puts me on hold and promptly disconnects me.

I call back, go through the same song and dance and the 2nd supervisor also disconnects me. It's now time for call #3 and I've become a raving lunatic. The rep answers the phone and tell her I want a supervisor. She refuses until I tell her why. I tell her why she says she needs my name, well, no, you don't need my name, just give a supervisor. And she just sits there not saying a word. And after I finally give here my name she needs me to answer all their dumb security questions. She refuses to escalate the call until I go through her questions. I finally hang up.

I was so upset I just waited till the next day to call back. I finally got a rep that was able to call the store. I eventually opted to just send it back FedEx. But I invested over 6 hours trying to get the phone activated and another 2+ hours trying to do the return. I am seriously considering just paying the ETF to get away from this company.

That sure sounds like one heck of a horrible experience. I'm curious, though, if your company has any sort of support agreemtn with Sprint/Nextel. If so, could the company contact have called for you instead? Or perhaps the issue is with the split billing (we don't use that so I have no idea how that works...sounds different, though).

We have a large deployment of Sprint/Nextel devices (over 800 devices in the US) and as a result have a very nice support agreement with a dedicated support team with a dedicated corporate support number to call. We have had the odd issue here and there where a device won't provision for some reason, but for the most part, I'm quite happy with it.

I shudder at the thought of dealing with anyone in a retail store or a 'common' support line.....

I Always Buy from the Company Store
 

While it may not stop all problems I have always gone to the company store (VZW now but GTE originally) and bought my phones there. I would not leave until I was sure the phone was activated and working. In the 9 + years I remember two times that I got a new phone before I walked out the door. Just a suggestion.

I will make no judgement of relative merits of the various cell phone providers because all have strengths in some areas and bloody disasters in others. I used to have a high opinion of T-Mobile as a GSM provider but a friend of mine with a Pearl complained today that the T-Mobile data service in Houston has been down most of the week with no idea when it will return to service. Buyer beware.

Actually tried to go that route initially. The head of our BES team sent an email to our Customer Service rep asking him to call me about ordering the new phone. I also sent a message to the rep adding my cell phone number to the contact information already given. I waited over a week and never received a call. The BES guy then sent an email to our sales rep. He too failed to call me. That's why I decided to just order the phone on my own.

Back when I originally got the split billing setup we had a different rep. I called her numerous times trying to get this setup. It took them 3 months to get it right. First they had the voice being billed to the company. Next month I had the data billing going to me. But eventually it got setup correctly.

When I was told that I'd need to setup a new Sprint account I immediately decided to not even try to go the split billing route again and instead just expense the cost of the data plan. It just wasn't worth the hassle.

At this point our company has started moving away from Nextel. The rest of the company is now restricted to either Verizon or T-Mobile. The one department that I'm in is still allowed to use Nextel, but we are the only ones. Lack of responsiveness to calls to our reps is the main reason.

You are always better off going to the store, buy and activate the phone there. Trying to complete a difficult conversion over the phone with overseas CS is problematic at best. At least in the store you are dealing with an American, face to face and is probably better equipped to serve you then some moron in another country staring at a computer terminal, reading off a check off list.

Very true. Unfortunately I was not able to find the 8830 in any of the local stores. I even happened to be there when UPS was dropping off a shipment but the there weren't any in that delivery. The 8830 is pretty hot right now at the local Sprint stores. None of them even bothered to have a display model out.