Crawling back for more

I'm in an abusive relationship....with my cell phone company. I came to this realization today as I was unwrapping a large cardboard box that I found outside of my front door.

Like a typical loser boyfriend, I have spent hours waiting for Sprint to help me, but instead I've gotten yelled at, stood up and they've made me feel like crap. And then when I finally decided it was time to cut my losses, they were all, "no baby, we can work this out. How about a present?"

And it worked. I'm SO WEAK!

It all started when I was home for Christmas and my cell phone (which I unaffectionately nicknamed Darth Vader, because it's all black and it's a little bastard) wouldn't charge. So I went to the Sprint store, which coincidentally is next to Tysons Corner mall and a Circuit City two days before Christmas. After I searched for parking for 35 minutes, I waited for a Sprint technician to help me.

Two hours later I was slowly driving back out of a parking garage filled with last-minute shoppers with a new Darth. Unfortunately I lost all of the numbers from my old phone, because the only way they can transfer data is by using the charge plug, which happened to be the broken piece of my phone. It only cost me $35 for the replacement, but since I had to go the day after a red eye, the lost vacation time slightly irked me. But that's not enough to dump over, is it?

But it quickly became clear that there was something wrong with my new phone. It wouldn't hold any charge and sometimes, halfway through a conversation, I would hear faint static on my end, but the person on the other end of the line wouldn't be able to hear me at all.

Maybe it was just bad reception? I made a million excuses, but after it happened again and again, I realized that my Darth was a lemon. So the day I was flying back to California, I went back to the Tysons Sprint Store. They actually had the gall to try to charge me an additional $35 to replace the phone "because you didn't buy insurance." But after I gave them a little sass, they changed their tune.

So they told me it was just the battery. "Bad batteries can cause static," the technician assured me, which sort of sounded reasonable at the time.

But after getting back to California, I had to go back to the Sprint store in Oakland of all places. I ran home from work on a Thursday night and drove in the rain to the store (which closes at 8) only to be told that the technicians only work from 11 until 4 everyday. The other nearby Sprint stores were only open 9-5 Monday through Friday so I had no option but to leave my phone at the Sprint store overnight so that the technician could look at it at 11 when he got in.

The host at the Sprint store just told me to wait for a salesperson who could take my phone and get my information. But after I waited 45 minutes, the sales rep told me he couldn't take my phone overnight. His excuse was: "we've lost too many. People get mad."

So I switched to Verizon. Then I called Sprint to cancel. To make a very long Friday night on the phone short, I ended up in a screaming match with a CRAZY woman who should not work in customer service, and then when I called back to complain about her attitude, this very nice man convinced me to stay with Sprint. He even sent me a brand new phone in the mail. And it's pink!

But I'm worried that every time my new pink gadget rings, I'm going to be reminded that I'm a pathetic weakling. I will at least find solace in that fact that my contract with Sprint ends in August. I guess I could switch to Verizon then. Right?