Summary: I had a sprint cell phone for almost four years and never had a problem. I am in the military and was transfer from VA to SD. I was very unhappy when my sprint phone started to roam.
The only two cell phone companies in the area are Alltel and Verizon. I've had problems with Verizon in the past with both home telephone service and almost DSL internet. Because of these reasons my husband and I decided on Alltel.
As you are about see my first impression of Alltel is not good. We wanted to keep our old VA numbers and were told that we would be able to do so. The salesperson was very knowledgeable on the different plans available and was also knowledgeable about the different alltel phones. However, he did not seem to know a lot about programming the phone or porting over the old numbers. We were helped right away when we walked in the door, but we were at the store for almost two hours while he attempted to set the phones up. He ended up giving us temporary phones numbers and told me to call customer service to have them "port" the old numbers to the new phones. I should have just kept the new rapid city numbers.
I spent most of today on the phone with both tech support and the department that does the porting. The port department told me the port was complete and transfer me to tech support to help me program my phone because it was not working. When I was transfered the tech support told me that the port was not complete and transfer me back and so on. I final was able to get someone at tech support who was willing to help me. Unfortunatly after spending some time typing in what he told me to and powering on and off my phone, he told me that I would have to go back to the sprint store where I bought the phone to have it manual programmed. Also, after following some of his instructions he gave me I now have a flashing "R" on one of my phones, but I will get to that later.
So, I left immedately after talking to tech support to go to the Alltel store. This time everything worked out great. The salesperson was about to help me and we were out of the store within fifteen mintues with working phones. I asked him about the flashing are and he assured me that it did not mean that it was roaming only that it was looking for a tower. I was so happy to have working phones I just got out of there, but after thinking about it I started to worry and called customer service about the flashing "R."
I should also mention that I bought two identical phones last night. One has the little tower symbol with lines and one has the flashing "R" even though they are right next to each other. I spoke with customer service twice tonight. Each person I talked to walked me through some steps on my phone, but the "R" did not go away. Both of their response were "Are you still able to make and receive calls from your phone?" I was told to go to a Alltel store to have the phone "flashed." So I will be going back to a
