No Sprint reception at home, but in contract

hi,

i am currently one year into a two year contract with sprint. i used to live in boston, where i had great reception, but moved to virginia last fall for graduate school. the reception at my house seemed OK at first but in mid-September 2006, it completely disintegrated and now my husband and i get NO coverage at our house. we can't check our messages, my phone doesn't ring, i couldn't call 911 if i needed to - it is a disaster. i have barely used my minutes, had to get a land line, and now have to use a calling card to call long distance (having long distance included was the whole point of having a cell phone!).

by the way, my husband and i have different phone models but both have the same problem with reception, so i know it's not the phones themselves.

i would very much like to get out of the rest of my sprint contract since i am paying for something i can't use. i had hoped the sprint folks would be sympathetic, but i have called several times and they have been entirely unhelpful. it only seems fair to me that if their product doesn't work, i shouldn't be stuck in contract. they keep saying that there is decent coverage in my general area (zip: 23185) but that my house must be in a dead spot. this doesn't help me much because i would obviously like to use my phone while IN my house, not sitting in a parking lot down the street where i get reception!

does anyone have any suggestions about what to do? should i go into a sprint store? email the CEO? keep trying customer service? i have been a good customer for 7 years and feel like they owe me here. i am so frustrated and would be grateful for any thoughts. thanks.

Well, if none of the other tractics have worked, maybe a signal amplifier would help, but they run in the $250-$300 range, and for that price, you coudl pay the early termination fee and switch to another WP.

VZ010

If all else fails you could try an external antenna for much less.

With VZW, if you move outside of a coverage area, you are let out of your contract. Maybe it's the same with Sprint. Give them a call and see, what could it hurt?

Seeing as how you moved your PRL might need updated. What a PRL is is a Preferred Roaming List. This is the software that your phone uses to find towers. If you have never had your phone in for service, or received a notice from sprint to do an over-the-air upgrade chances are your tower software is out of date. Take it to the sprint store they'll upgrade that and your phone's software for free! Hope that helps you!

thanks everyone, but i am still having problems. i spent 3.5 hours visiting three (!) sprint stores on friday so they could update my software and PRL, but that hasn't helped - i still have horrible reception here at home. because customer service says i'll be charged the huge termination fee, i think i'm going to resort to writing a livid letter to the CEO to see if i can get out of my contract . . .

in the meantime, if anyone else has suggestions i definitely appreciate hearing them. thanks!

what make and model is your phone?

it's a PM-225 by LG. it's a year old so i think i should be able to use it at home!

many thanks for any assistance.

i have the same exact problem. let me know how it goes for you and I will let you know also if i have any luck. they told me that service wasn't guaranteed within my home, just in my area and I guess that is because they wouldn't have any way of knowing for sure if you're telling the truth about bad reception in your home or if you're looking for a way out of your contract, but still, that should be their problem, not ours. we should be able to move into a home within where service is poor and be able to leave sprint without being charged. what else are we supposed to do? move again? good luck.

Not to rock the boat but LG 225's are TERRIBLE phones, i fix or repair 8-10 of those phones a day in my store. Here's what to do, goto your local sprint store and ask to talk to the manager, there is a website they can access called employees helping customers and request him to put in a network trouble ticket. Tell them you're not getting service and within a few days you should have an RF crew on your front porch taking readings. If they see the readings are whacky they will goto the nearest tower right then and there and tweak the power rating and come back to your house to test. Now granted geography does play a rule in your signal strength as well, the topography around your house, the layout of your house, the materials your house are made from.cell phones really weren't designed at first to work indoors at all so take that into consideration.the first cell phones were car mounted and needed alot of power to operate.thats why they're called mobile phones, they should be used when your mobile. I actually had the pleasure to meet my regions RF manager the other evening and sprint is taking dead spots very seriously.so more than likely a NTT submission will get you some satisfaction

No Sprint reception at home, but in contract

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