Quote:
Originally posted by Shadow248
Not my experience.
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How about this one. Just one of my many bad experiences.
I am driving back home in downtown Chicago along Lake shore drive. Sprint has their towers all over Chicago and signal is pretty good most of the times. I was working at Motorola at the time and I used the Vader phone (yepp the one about the size of 2 sticks of gum). I got the employee discount on the phone and I personally flashed the phone for sprint with the latest firmware at Motorola.
This was sometimes back in 2000. Anyways, I was driving. I saw a drunk idiot. I called 911. It rang and nothing. I switched off the phone and switch it back on. I called 911 again. This time no ring but the counter kept going. I hung up and called again. Nothing. Now I am pissed. I took the next exist (which was my exit) and pulled in the garage. I went upstairs (23rd floor) and drank a glass of water. I called customer service. It went through. I asked for a manager and the girl asked if she can help. I told her I need to talk to a customer service manager who can understand the technical structures behind the cell towers and e911 system and I will stay on the line. After about 2 minutes of wait, someone came on. He told me that he is a "manager" and that he can help.
So the discussion starts. We established in the next 10-15 minutes that we know what cell towers are and how the E911 system works. Somewhere in there, I made a 3 way call to my nextel phone and I took the sprint phone off for testing. So he tried to test it, read back the firmware numbers and such and discovered that the phone is ok. (duh!) Now my question starts and it was a very simple question "How come I can not dial 911 a couple of minutes ago?" His answer was that my cellphone must be out of range from the previous tower while I was driving and it has not negotiated to the next tower in the hand over stage. I started laughing. I asked another simple question. "Is sprint running full 1900 PCS service in Chicago, particularly along lake shore drive?" He confirmed that sprint is indeed a full PCS system in Chicago. Then tower hand overs should not be an issue at all. PCS is made to handle that perfectly well. Hell I personally know the coders who made those codes at the towers and I personally know the coders that did the phone software. I was the usher for the guy who designed the keypad and the battery connectors on the phone. He said he had no explanation. The deal was that they turned off the 911 incoming system (or rather put it in the low priority mode).
It got better. According to E911 requirements, it was supposed to be fully implemented by August 1998 and the version at the time was setup in such a way that any towers who can receive the phone signal was to drop 5 calls to let that 911 call go through. Now it can even pinpoint your location using agps. But did sprint towers do that? No. After about an hour talk, we established that e911 system was not fully implemented in Chicago for sprint. (delayed by 2 years?
) Now he is blaming it on my phone (which he oked at the start of our conversation) and that there could be something wrong with my phone.
I politely informed him that I worked for Motorola and I personally tested the phone a couple of days ago (yes I had nothing to do and I was bored) and that sprint is violating the FCC regulations on the E911 system and that I have to report this incident to the proper authorities. He blew up and started calling me names and that it would be ok -- in fact he insists that I no longer use sprint since he or sprint can not solve my 911 call issues.
When a customer service manager call you names and tells me to go find another service provider, I take things seriously. I went back to work and sent this message to the PCS division manager and sent a long message to the FCC. I am not sure if the moron still works at sprint but when a customer service calls you names, you have issues.
I personally thinks that he mainly got pissed because I knew the system better than he does and I was teaching him things he did not know. But calling me ****** was out of line.