So it was about that time... After having my current cell phone for about three years, it was starting to act peculiar, not booting up properly on occasion, making unexpected noises for no apparent reason at all, and the like. Time to get a new phone I guessed, and so did my provider Sprint, as they were leaving me voice mails every couple of days pitching a valued customer credit. After all, I had been a Sprint wireless customer for seven years - pretty long time by today's standards.
I went about researching the VC credit and learned I was to visit my nearest store to learn the exact details. Upon visiting my local Sprint store, I found out that I was due a $150 credit towards a new phone. Sweet I thought, as I knew most of their high end phones retailed for about $150 after rebates - I should be able to get my new phone for free! Alas, this was not to be - the phone I wanted, a Samsung model that competes with Motorola's RAZR, would still cost me $99. Not because it was retailing for $249 mind you, but because my VC credit could not be used on top of any existing rebates or sales prices - Huh? It appeared all of the phones in Sprint's store were at a sale price or had rebates associated to them. So what good was this valued customer credit if it was worthless?
Trying to reason with the store manager, I informed him I'd been a loyal Sprint customer for seven years, and asked if there wasn't anything he could do for me - maybe at least cut the $99 Samsung in half - I'd pay $49 for it. NO, we can't do anything for you, is what I was told. Well, I guess he made my decision for me as to whether or not I would remain a Sprint wireless customer.
On the way back from the Sprint store, I stopped by T-Mobile and Verizon stores. Both offer the RAZR - sweet phone. However, neither would offer me the phone for free - the cheapest I could get it would be for $69 for T-Mobile. I decided to think about it some more.
A day or so later, I remembered reading about a wireless B-to-C website that was being dubbed the "Expedia for Cell Phones". I managed to find it buried in my books marks - WireFly, that was it! I had read about the company in Inc. magazine, as Wirefly was ranked #1 in the 2004 Inc. 500 list.
I visited the website and quickly learned that I could receive a FREE RAZR from EITHER T-Mobile or Verizon, along with a FREE Bluetooth headset, for signing up as a new customer to either provider. I was a bit hesitant, as I did want to keep my current phone number and did not want to end up with a huge headache trying to get my number ported to a new provider. What if I had problems? Who would I call - Wirefly or T-Mobile, or Sprint?
After giving this a bit more thought, and becoming angry thinking about how Sprint had just treated me, a loyal customer, I decided to risk it... Worst case, I'd end up with a new cell phone number... not the end of the world.
Having picked T-Mobile as my provider (due to their cheap web service) and phone, and read through Wirefly's order process information, I confirmed my purchase.
10 Minutes later I received a confirmation email that Wirefly had received my order and was notifying T-Mobile of my new account application. Five minutes after that I received an email that T-Mobile had confirmed my account creation to Wirefly. About ten minutes later I received yet another email informing me that T-Mobile had initiated my phone number transfer from Sprint and had received a port request acknowledgment back. Yet again, several minutes later I received an email informing me that Wirefly had everything they needed to ship my new phone and accessories to me, which they would be doing shortly.
Shortly thereafter, I received an email to inform me that my order had shipped, FedEx 2nd day delivery (for free), with my shipment tracking number. That was Wednesday. As I write this, on Friday, I see my new phone sitting on my desk next to me. Nice work Wirefly.
In the future, I will only use brick-and-mortar cell phone stores as show rooms for online phone purchases from Wirefly. Not sure how the cell phone providers think they're offering any kind of customer experience since they are obviously unwilling to treat loyal existing customers as well as as they should be though... It will be interesting to see how the network provider stores pan out in the long term.
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