Mordtech’s Blog

General Technology Blog

Out of our Sprint Contract with NO ETF!!!!

We’ve been trying to get out from under das boot of Sprint for a couple of months now. On Black Friday, I did a quick search on getting out of a Sprint contract. And there it was, Sprint was going to make a change to their administrative fees and someone had used that has the basis of a “Material Change” to the contract.

As we were heading off to pick up the kids from the grandparents’, we grabbed the mail from the day before. We found our latest Sprint bill outlining the changes that are to go into effect. We immediately contacted Sprint to see if we could get our contract cancelled. Of course, the CS rep we spoke to said that we wouldn’t be able to get out of the contract without Early Termination Fees (ETF). We asked to speak to a manager. The person that got on the line, wasn’t much more help; typical Sprint Customer Service. When we asked to speak to their manager, we were told everyone else had gone home for the day. We had them log a ticket and they said someone would call us back on Saturday. A Sprint CS rep called us on Saturday, but we we’re unable to speak to them. We arranged on a Monday call back.

My wife called me on Monday stating that Sprint had called back and said that yes, it was a material change to our contract and that we could port our numbers with no ETF. I almost immediately went to ATT’s website and started researching phones. I had already purchased an iPhone about a month before, and since I had to make sure my wife didn’t steal it every day, I already knew what I was going to get her. We had to find two phones for other members of the family. We were hoping to get a phone with a slide out keyboard and also cheap. But that just didn’t happen; we ended up going with the Sony Erickson w580i.

The Sprint saga is coming to a close.

Now, moving on to our experience at the AT&T retail store. I’m not sure when it happened, as we left AT&T for our home phone service almost 3 years ago, because of poor customer service and availability. Now, we are using them for our wireless coverage as well as their U-Verse TV and Internet service. The two times, I’ve been in AT&T retail stores in the last month and a half, I’ve actually left happy. That has never happened at a Sprint store. Our salesman was patient, even though we had our two son’s running around like crazy hooligans. And, I recommend that if anyone from AT&T happens to read this. Get some games on the demo iPhones in your retail stores. Our five year old was less than thrilled with the fact that he couldn’t play games on the iPhones like he could on mine. Anyways, we walked out about an hour later with a new iPhone, 2 w580i’s, and a family plan.

Also, AT&T, please try out your website with an iPhone. I have more Safari failures on your website when viewed through the iPhone browser than anywhere, except maybe the Monster.com website.

You can find more information here: http://consumerist.com/5098064/reader-escapes-sprint-with-no-etf-thanks-to-admin-fee-increase

 

December 2, 2008 Posted by mordtech | Iphone | , , , | No Comments Yet

iPhone 3G adventures

Yesterday was my first foray into the local Apple store for support on my iPhone. While walking through a large chain electronics store, my phone displayed the phrase along the lines of, you phone can no longer send or receive phone calls, please contact support. I rebooted the phone hoping that it was just a one time issue. After the reboot, the phone had lost its entire configuration and would only allow emergency calls. My wife called AT&T support and they scheduled a appointment at the local Apple store for us. OK, the appointment time was 6. The problem, it was only 11. Also, by local, I mean that it was only 45 minutes from the house. Luckily, I was only about 10 minutes from the store yesterday, but I couldn’t justify driving 45 minutes home, and then 45 minutes back. So we decided to head over to the store and see if we could get in early.

Apparently, Apple fans have not noticed there is a burgeoning recession. The store is in a mall, and while most of the mall was fairly empty, it was standing room only in the store. We went up to the “Genius Bar” to see if we would get in the loop. Nope, they were extremely busy and expected that we wouldn’t get in an earlier than our appointment. They did say that we could hang out in the store and see if anything came up. I asked if I could leave the phone and have them try to slip it in whenever they could. Again, nope; they don’t like having customer’s equipment without them being there. So now, we have to decide what to do for the next 6 hours.

Fast forward, 6 hours…..

We head back into the store around 5:15 and get called around 5:30. The tech assigned to my phone was eager to help us out. He looked at my phone and stated that this was new; he had never seen this symptom. He spoke to another tech, whom had seen it one time before, and they believed that it was due to a failed 2.1 upgrade from the factory. This phone was only 4 weeks old and delivered from the factory with the 2.1 firmware. After asking when the last time we had done a full synch, the tech attempted a deep restore back to factory using the 2.1 firmware. Well during the restore the tech went on break and asked one of the other techs to keep an eye on the phone for him. 45 minutes later, I went back to the “Genius Bar” and asked for a status up. Apparently the deep restore had failed and no one had looked at it for the last 30 minutes or so. When the tech came back from break, he was genuinely sorry for the miscommunications. After another 15 minutes I was walking out of the store with a brand new phone.

So other then 7+ hours out of my life, it wasn’t an entirely bad experience. I did get to play with some of the new Apple desktops, and realized as a Wintel admin, I would have a hard time dealing with the Apple mouse. Weird..

Some of the symptoms, I was experiencing with my phone before it bricked it self.

  1. Overheating. Using the iPhone for any length of time caused it to run hot. According to the tech, this might be due to the bad firmware update.
  2. IPod play back would skip occasionally. This sounded like a scratched record.
  3. Applications would unexpectedly die and return to the home screen. This was most noticeable in Safari.

So the moral of this store is that if you are experiencing the above symptoms, make sure you get a good sync. Call Apple and make an appointment.

Apple iPhone support page: http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/

U.S. iPhone technical support: 1-800-MY-IPHONE (1-800-694-7466)

November 9, 2008 Posted by mordtech | Apple, Iphone | , , , | No Comments Yet

Microsoft Remote Desktop on IPhone

As a Windows administrator, there are many times where you are out and get the emergency call that a service is down and you need to come into the office. You need to drop everything and run to the office or the datacenter. Smart phones, specifically the Apple Iphone can help out. An application WinAdmin allows you to RDP into your server or desktop and work on the issue.

sounds good, what do I need to do?

 

  1. Have an Iphone or Ipod Touch
  2. Either connect through wireless broadband or WiFi
  3. Download WinAdmin through Apple Store on your unit
  4. Configure and connect through VPN client if outside of internal network
  5. Start WinAdmin and add new server
  6. connect to the server and work.

November 2, 2008 Posted by mordtech | Apple, Iphone, Microsoft, Windows | , , | 1 Comment