Here’s my configuration (perhaps mostly for geeks, but hopefully also for anyone who’s interested):

I started with an old 433MHz Dell desktop system with a 3.2GB hard drive that Mark had laying around, and beefed its memory up to a whopping 128MB. Other than that, it’s vanilla hardware, probably something you could even find in a dumpster behind your friendly neighborhood office complex. I plugged it into a battery-backup power supply, connected it to my local network, and stuck it in a closet where the noise wouldn’t bother anyone.

From there, I decided to use the FREE trixbox PBX all-in-one telephony system, because trixbox (which is based on Asterisk) has all the software you need to run anything from a simple home phone system all the way up to an enterprise-level call center. Installing trixbox on the hardware was amazingly easy – I popped the CD in, rebooted, and it did the rest. It took care of installing the operating system, the phone system software, and all of the other packages I could ever want. When it was done, it pointed me to a web interface that I could use to administer the system from there. I practically didn’t even need to have a keyboard attached, and I certainly didn’t have to mess with logging in on the command line and puttering around with configuration files. And, I get visual displays of call activity, e-mail and web access to voicemail, vital stats on the hardware, and lots more. Wow. Did I mention it’s free?

At Summersault, we’re using IP phones, which are basically phones that plug into the network instead of into a phone line. This is convenient because you don’t have to run copper wire everywhere (that’s a good thing to keep in mind if you’re trying to convert a high school into a national communications center for a Presidential Debate, eh?), and I could do that at home too and just take advantage of my local network setup. But, I decided that I wanted the flexibility of using regular old phones that I had laying around (especially the one with a wireless handset), so I bought a Sangoma A200 card with 2 FXS ports on it. That’s basically a fancy way of saying I bought a thingamajig that went in the computer that allowed me to plug a phone into it.

Then I had to figure out what to tell my system about how to route phone calls. In other words, when I pick up a phone and punch in some numbers, where should the call go? That’s part of the beauty of a VOIP system…I can set things up however I want. I could have an extension for the kitchen, and one for the basement, and maybe a shortcut that goes straight to a family member’s home number, and…the possibilities are endless.

But I kept it simple, don’t worry. Long distance calls are routed out through the CallWithUs.com service, which charges a flat fee of 1.38 cents per minute (that’s $0.0138, Verizon) to calls in the U.S., and I can refill my account there through quick and easy PayPal payments. No federal taxes, no start up fees, no monthly charges. Beautiful.

Local calls are a different story. I *could* route them through CallWithUs, but it doesn’t feel right to pay a per-minute fee for something that is traditionally “standard” in a normal phone setup. I could call Verizon and have a physical land-line put in (my Sangoma card has a port for that too), and just route all my local calls there, but then I’d have those pesky monthly fees whether I used it or not. The solution? For now, I’m telling my VOIP system to talk to the VOIP system at Summersault, and use one of the company’s available phone lines for outgoing local calls. Cool!

(Just think about all of the business phone lines that sit around unused during evenings and weekends, and how we could save lots of dollars by making better use of them, especially as a part of good local infrastructure planning! Mark and I have even joked about making “local phone calls” an employment perk, but we’re not sure that would be a real selling point, yet.)

Incoming calls are a slightly different matter, and I haven’t gotten that far yet. CallWithUs, Sipphone and various other providers like them offer dedicated local phone numbers for dialing in (sort of like you can get with Skype) for as low as $6.50/month, usually with a certain number of incoming minutes free. I’m not sure we need that yet, but however it might get setup, the features for handling incoming calls in trixbox are extensive. We could have it ring right through, or go into a menu system (“press 5 if you are calling to sell something…”), or go to voicemail, or forward to a cell phone, or….phew. One thing at a time.

So, that’s the setup for now. It’s definitely overkill for my simple home needs, but I enjoyed putting it together as a part of a proof-of-concept, and it’s neat (as a geek, anyway) to have that kind of control over every aspect of your phone setup.

There are lots of places to turn to if you want to try some of this yourself. I learned a lot of what I know about VOIP and Asterisk-based phone systems through my work in transitioning Summersault’s phone system to that setup. I can certainly recommend the books Switching to VOIP and Asterisk: The Future of Telephony (which, in addition to being available in sturdy book form, is also available free to download). They’re definitely geared toward folks who are ready to dive into the guts of telephony software, but they’re still accessible to those just wanting to learn more about phone infrastructure and what’s possible with VOIP.

And of course, through Summersault, I’m available to consult on these matters for home and business use, though I can’t promise that I’d feel comfortable charging for all of my time, since it’s just so much darn fun.

Update on 10/16/2007: I’ve now added an incoming phone number (DID) to the setup, also through CallWithUs. At $6.50/month with 2,000 free minutes included, it seemed like a great deal when the need arose. And it’s especially nice that they let you set your own outbound caller-ID, so all of the calls appear to come from the new number, making return calls even easier. Nice!

I’d had my Sprint cell phone and plan since 2001 – six years of relatively problem free operation (minor billing annoyances aside). And they recognized that I was a loyal customer who always paid my bill on time – in recent years they regularly sent me offers to “upgrade my plan” or my phone and receive a billing credit (but we all know this is because they wanted me to renew my vows and sign on to a new contract).

Recently, I decided that I wanted to look at a phone upgrade. 6 years had taken its toll on my Samsung A500, and I was excited about the possibility of a phone that would better sync up its contacts and calendar with my computer. I had asked Slashdot about such a product a few years ago, but the offerings were much more promising now.

So I went into the Sprint Store. I said “I’m interested in upgrading to a new phone, but only if I’m able to keep my current plan and features at the same price” — the folks at Consumerist.com have taught me well about what to ask for and how to ask. And it was important – I was using my A500 as a modem for my Mac laptop when I didn’t otherwise have network access, and I wanted that to continue. As a part of that feature – it was called Unlimited PCS Vision – I also had unlimited text messaging, which was important for my business use.

The person at the store said “We can do that. You can have this new phone (a Motorola Razor V3M) and the same plan you have now with the same features at the same price, as long as you renew your contract for 2 years.” I thought that was reasonable – I’ll commit to them, they’ll keep things as they are with me, we’ll all be happy. And I again had the Sprint store representative explicitly confirm that the above important features would still be present on my new plan.

About a week after the purchase, I tried to use the new phone as a modem. It didn’t work, and I called customer service to ask why.

Sprint: “Sir, you don’t have that feature enabled on your plan any more.”

Me: “Well, the folks at the Sprint Store told me that feature would continue to be on my plan at no additional charge.”

Sprint: “Okay, we can go ahead and get that enabled for you so you can use your cell phone as a modem with your laptop. Just wait a few hours for that feature to be enabled and then try again.”

Me: “Thanks, I’ll do that!”

About a week or two after that, I finally had a chance to try using the phone as a modem again, this time when I really needed it. It didn’t work. I called them back.

Me: “When I changed over to my new plan, the person in the store guaranteed me that I would continue to have the same features, including using my phone as a modem for my laptop. I called a week ago and they told me that I should be able to use this feature once it was turned on. It still doesn’t work.”

Sprint: “Well, actually, you would need to pay for a data plan to do that, and those start at $39/month.”

Me: “But what about what I was told when I got the new phone and what I was told since then by customer service.”

Sprint: “I’m sorry, they didn’t know what they were talking about.”

So then I have the choice to make: 1) take my phone back to the store and demand that they give me a refund and put me back on my old plan with my beat up old phone, 2) fight Sprint on their failure to honor statements made by their representatives, or 3) just live with it.

I was doing fine with #3 until today, when the Sprint bill showed up and included charges for text messages. I shouldn’t be billed for text messages, because my old plan had unlimited text messaging that I was never billed for, so my NEW plan should have unlimited text messaging too. I called Sprint again.

“We are unable to answer your call at this time. Please try again later.”

Their phone system was apparently overloaded. I called back a few minutes later.

“We estimate your wait time to be 3 minutes or less.”

And then 3 minutes went by, and their phone system disconnected the call. I called back again, and their phone system disconnected the call.

I called back again and finally get through.

Sprint: “This is Jim, how can I help you?”

Me: “I’m having a really frustrating time with Sprint today, and your phone system just hung up on me three times in a row.”

Sprint: Silence. For a good 10 seconds. He wasn’t going to respond to my frustration.

Me: “Anyway, the bill and the customer service reps say that I have unlimited text messages, and yet I’ve been billed for text messages.”

Sprint: “You don’t have unlimited text messages. Let me see what I can find here. I see what you’re talking about, you were billed when you shouldn’t be. As far as I can see, you’ve never had text messaging. I’ll give you a credit for the text messages on this bill, but in the future, you should consider adding a text messaging option to your plan, maybe 300 messages or so.”

Me: “You don’t understand. I used to have unlimited text messaging. I was told that I should still have unlimited text messaging. I don’t want to add it on because I should already have it.”

Jim took the hint that it was time to transfer me to someone else. He put me on hold. For 10 minutes. And then he came back and said “they” had him on hold, but that he wasn’t going to lose me. And so he put me on hold again. For 15 more minutes. And then he came back:

Sprint: “Basically you got lucky the last few years texting for free. When you got a new phone, the system updated and caught itself. You should have been billed all that time.”

Me: “When I went into that store and told them that I wanted to continue my past plan for the same price, and explicitly mentioned unlimited text messaging and using my phone as a modem, and when that Sprint representative told me that I *would* have those features, Sprint made a commitment to me to have those features on my plan at the same price. Now how are you going to honor that commitment?”

Sprint: “What if I said ‘okay we can do that,’ then we’d have to go back and charge you for all the text messaging you used over the years that we didn’t catch. I had a supervisor review this and they said there’s no way we can give you unlimited text messaging.”

Me: “All that time I was told I was getting unlimited text messages as a part of the Unlimited Sprint Vision, so I don’t see how you could retroactively tell me that I wasn’t supposed to have that feature. Could I talk to that supervisor?”

As I sat on hold again, I pondered how I had predicted this when I walked out of the Sprint Store with my new phone. “Surely it can’t be that easy,” I had thought. “Surely I will be wrapped up in a long miserable phone conversation with Sprint a few weeks from now.” And there I was.

Finally a supervisor, Robert, got on the line. I re-explained the situation from start to finish, and that I expected Sprint to either honor its commitment or let me go back to my old plan and features. Robert said that neither would be possible.

Sprint: “You weren’t supposed to be using your phone as a modem or getting unlimited text messaging all that time.”

Me: “So the person at the Sprint store who told me I could have those features on my new plan at the same price was essentially lying to me, or didn’t know what she was talking about?”

Sprint: “It sounds like that was a miscommunication, yes.”

Robert ended up giving me a credit for the billing on this month’s text messaging, and added an unlimited text messaging line item to my plan at no charge. I confirmed that if I wanted to use my phone as a modem I would have to pay $39/month more, which there’s no way I could justify.

At the end of my now hour-long phone call, I asked Robert how I could register my extreme dissatisfaction with Sprint’s service, and in the monotone, robotic voice of someone who had explained the answer thousands of times, he suggested I e-mail the corporate office via “dub dub dub dot sprint dot com.” When he asked me if there was anything else he could do for me today, I laughed out loud and struggled to restrain myself from saying anything other than a pleasant good-bye.

Summary: I had a plan and a phone and a wireless company I was reasonably happy with. I wanted a new phone but wanted everything else to stay the same, and was promised by Sprint multiple times that it could, should, and would. I believed them. Time passed, and Sprint came to admit that they could not honor their earlier commitments, that I additionally couldn’t go back to my old phone and plan, that their computerized billing system and customer service staff aren’t capable of handling such a simple change, and that they don’t care enough about their customers to try to do any better the next time.

Is it really possible for things to have gotten so bad?

Update on 6/28/07: This weblog entry has quickly become one of the more popular on my site, largely due to its tendency to appear high in web searches for “sprint customer service” and related queries. As you’ll see if you read the comments, Sprint did contact me as a result of it, and I was able to talk to someone a bit more in depth about my concerns. So as not to leave my original post title’s question so open ended – can Sprint really be this bad? – I want to list some concrete steps that I think Sprint should take to “resolve” this particular issue. If they can do these things, I’ll be happy to note that here, close the comments on this blog entry and move on.

1. A representative of the local Sprint store, where all of this began, should contact me to apologize for giving out incorrect information.
2. Sprint should communicate what specific actions they’ve taken internally as a result of my concerns about customer service procedures.
3. Sprint should communicate what specific steps they’re taking to improve the quality and humanity of their customer service procedures overall.
4. Sprint should compensate me for the time I spent dealing with this issue. Since I don’t want to bother calculating what that translates to in terms of my normal wages, I’ll suggest a $250 donation in my name to the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.

What do you think, Sprint?

Due to a major earthquake in the South-Pacific area, telephone, internet circuits, and services from the United States have interrupted our call center operations. We apologize for any inconvenience or delay and appreciate your patience.

I felt bad for them, but carried on and called them anyway, assuming that they would prioritize sales calls in their time of rebuilding. The guy who answered the phone made it very clear, before letting me say anything, that he would ONLY help me with PRE-SALES questions. (I suppose it’s a universal problem that people call the sales extension when they really need technical support, assuming they’ll get someone faster.) I said “okay, I need help deciding which one of your products to buy.” I explained our requirements and which product I thought we needed, and his response was…

“Okay, let me get you over to…” and then I hear a click, and all of the sudden I’m back in their automated voicemail menu, with options that were completely unrelated to my question. No “can I transfer you?” or “Can you hold?,” just an end to our sales conversation. Wow.

Now I know which Linksys product I need to buy: none of them.

Your call may be recorded to insure quality, indeed.

I have a Sprint PCS phone that I use as my primary, and only, home phone line. There are tons of reasons why I like this arrangement, which I won’t go into here, but I’ve been a loyal, pay-on-time Sprint customer for several years now. Which is why it was maddeningly frustrating to go to make a call today and get a note that my account had been shut off because I was over my spending limit.

I went to Sprint’s website to see if I could find out how I’d used so many minutes, which they tout as the place where you can do everything you want with your account, only to find that my recent billing/usage information (including the overages) weren’t available in detail on their site yet.

“Fine, I’m sure this is a misunderstanding,” I think, “I’ll just go ahead and pay to get service turned back on, and work out the details later”. But of course it’s not that easy! I make a credit card payment through their automated system, only to find out that it can take some indeterminate amount of time (up to 12 hours, said one service rep.) for that payment to apply to my account.

And this time passes as my family drives out of town, forgetting a few things that I had tried to call them about right as they left, when I got the “welcome to Sprint PCS…” warning.

So, that’s two cases where different, critical parts of the Sprint PCS billing and account management system are not in sync, and where it will take some unknown amount of time for the data to be shuffled from one place to another. In my humble opinion, if you’re providing an important service, which to many people is considered “mission critical”, and you spend millions of dollars advertising it as a reliable, user-friendly thing, and you’re going to shut that service off automatically because of the state of a certain data set, you damn well better be updating that data set on a VERY regular basis, so that as soon as it changes again, you restore the service. I can just picture it now: there’s some tab-delimited export file sitting on the payments server, waiting for a cron job to fire up 11 hours from now that will transfer it to the accounts server, bringing my account back into good standing (even though, from my perspective, it already is). How much grief would they save by fixing that lapse? The Sprint service reps. I just shared these thoughts with on the phone would probably at least have appreciated it.

One Sprint. Many Solutions. Many Servers. Much waiting. Much frustration. Still not focused on the customer.