[fatbike]

I haven't said much about the experience I have had with Sprint/Nextel here but I have to tell you that my most recent experience with Sprint was horrible!
I was a very satisfied Nextel customer for 10 years and had six personal phones (family) and well over 100 business Nextel's. My most recent Nextel phone was a 7100i which for the most part I liked. Unexpectedly I had two of them fail within 6 months. When the second one failed, I was told that, because I was not eligible for an upgrade, I would either have to send it out and wait 10 days to two weeks for the repair, or pay full retail for a replacement.
I use this phone for business and without it, I may as well be closed. I had the top-o-the-line service plan, and had never had a replacement issue with Nextel prior to the Sprint merge. Well the Sprint folks didn't want to hear it. When I expressed to them that I would have to go across the street to Verizon and switch service on this and 5 other phones the reply was "You gotta do what you gotta do..."
Well that was it for me. I did what I had to do. I was willing to pay the promotional price to replace my phone and stay with Sprint, where I was spending over $400.00 a month, but they were clearly interested in something different.
Now I am aware of corporate policy, contracts and all of that, but I have to tell you that Verizon has replaced my phone 4 times in 6 months, and never was my phone non-functioning. I went from a 'Q' to an XV6700 to a Razr to an 8830 (once a Crackberry addict, always a Crackberry addict...) and I never got a hard time from the Verizon folks... not once. They didn't have to help me, but they did, and that goes a long way with me.

Hard to imagine that after 10 years of business with Nextel, the best they could offer me was the 'brush off'.