| TelCo's are the blurst

Don't ever buy a SprintNextel Blackberry. Why? Well, according to my less than scientific, but wholly personal experience, activating 1 in 8 units will be the nostril raping of a life time. If you can not get the unit working on the first attempt, just swallow your distaste for the waste of money/resources and throw the inactive blackberry away. Then, just buy a new one and start from scratch. Viola!

I have wasted no less than 7 hours of my working life the past week and a half on hold and/or hashing it out with various SprintNextel reps. I can not even tell you how many departments I have been in contact with. At the very least, more than I have fingers. No amount of money is worth the agony of revisiting the scenario over and over and over with each new rep you are sent to in, "yet another department". Especially, when no one can tell you what is wrong in the first place. You can literally hear each reps mind scream not to tackle the problem at hand and to pass the buck. I have been disconnected more times than I care to remember. Most infuriatingly, I have heard the line, "Let me put you on hold so that I may brief the rep I am transferring you to", only to get the following line from the supposedly 'briefed' rep, "Can I have your name and account number?" Not a single one seems to know anything about said briefing except for one instance where the first rep stayed on the phone with me and the new rep. I mean WTF? At some point in this whole process it was definitely cheaper for my company to buy a new phone then burn away the cost of my resources.

The long and the short? No dice yet. Last Friday I almost flipped my desk over, ripped my office apart and threw a world-class fit of rage when I got disconnected after a somewhat promising 2.5 hour call segment. Oh my, I can not remember the last time I was so near absolutely and explosively losing my temper.

D>M>