What's Worse Than Nail Clipping on Muni? Using Your Speakerphone

The annoying ass perp in pink.

I've blogged in the past about people who have done some annoying stuff on Muni (see questions and thoughts while riding Muni).  Number one was nail clipping because the sound is so irritating, but I think I found my new number one annoyance while riding Muni.

If you've watched the season premiere of South Park, it showed an irritated Kyle who is frustrated at Eric Cartman for having conversations on his cell phone by using his speakerphone everywhere he goes.

But while that happened in the animated television world, it happened on Saturday early afternoon when I was taking the 44 bus going northbound.  When the bus was in Golden Gate Park to stop in front of the Academy of Sciences, I saw a woman pull out her smartphone and was making a phone call.  All seemed normal at that point until I started hearing the automated telephone greeting through her speakerphone.

The entire back half the bus can hear the automated message on her phone and she was able to connect to a telephone operator to ask questions and get responses.  To make matters even more amusing, it was a conversation with the operator that would be confidential or a private matter, such as calling your credit card company or your doctor.  She continued having the conversation back and forth between the operator, and I can hear the conversation while I was listening to music with my headphones.  I snapped a couple of pictures of her so I can humiliate her on my blog, Twitter, and Instagram accounts.

Get off the bus and chat.

The people around me was rolling their eyes at her while the conversation kept going on, and it finally stopped when she exited the bus at 6th Avenue and Geary.  Thank my patience for not outbursting and telling her to shut the hell up or stop using the speakerphone, because I was getting close to doing just that.

Are some people so oblivious these days they'd pull a stunt like that on public transit?  It's a private conversation you fool!  Even the automated message on the bus reminds passengers to refrain from using their cell phones to prevent crime; it should also be a crime to yack on your cell phone with the speaker on.

Sprint's Customer Service: Yeah Right...

There's nothing fun about having a cell phone and hassling with customer service. Any company makes it easy if everything goes fine with the service they provide, and you pay on-time. But when there's a problem, customer service goes down the drain real quick.

So here's my six day nightmare...

• Last Saturday, I went to an official Sprint store and told the person that I wanted to get an Android phone. I agreed to renew my contract to get the discounts and savings on the phone I was interested in.
• For the next day, it was just fiddling around with the phone for cool apps to get and some helpful programs to make sure I'm not killing the battery.
• Then the horror happened... on Monday, I unplugged the phone, took the bus to work, and by 3PM, the battery died. I was horrified and upset that a cell phone would die so fast, even when the phone's screen was off and just idle.
• On Tuesday, I return to the store and used Sprint's 30-day guarantee where I can return the phone, pay a $35 restocking fee, and get my former Motorola phone activated. I agreed to the restocking charge, got a full refund on the phone, and they attempted to activate the phone.
• Yeah... activate the old phone, they were unable. The employee called technical support and was also unable to activate and register the old phone that worked perfectly fine last night when I turned it on, saw the main home screen and recharged the battery. The guy gave up and made me talk to customer service. The store folks just hid in their employee lounge and didn't even care to check on how the conversation is going on the phone.
  
• The horror continues... I spoke to a customer service agent, who passed me onto a technical support agent, and finally waited on hold for over 20 minutes to speak to one of their escalated customer support managers. I was in the store for over an hour for a job that could have taken a quick 10 to 20 minutes tops. The escalated support person told me they are shipping me a refurbished replacement (exact model of my old Motorola) to my home and should arrive the next day. I also demanded compensation for all the hassle I've been through and she guaranteed me a big service credit. After this whole mess, I walked out of the store after standing there for 90 MINUTES.
  
• So it's Wednesday, I've been a "phoneless bum" for 36 hours, and I noticed the box arrived at my home. I called-in to get the phone activated.
• The first person I talked to helped me get the phone activated, placed me on hold twice, and finally (and I believe intentionally) hung-up on me. I was ticked-off. Even more stupid, the lady said that she was going to activate the Android phone; I told her the whole story and clearly said I wanted my old Motorola activated, not the damn Android.
  
• I called customer service again explaining the whole mess. Instead of just getting my phone activated, she sends me to technical support with a long 15 minute wait because they were "very busy." The tech support guy also had trouble activating my phone and told me to input some codes into my phone; finally he gave me the code to do a factory reset to the refurbished unit and it magically worked. By the time it was finished, I spent over ONE HOUR on the phone to get it activated.
  

Sprint really made me very upset. The store employees are happy to bend over backwards to sell you a phone, but sure as hell don't give a damn about getting your old phone reactivated, especially when my reason for returning it is because the Android's phone battery was a total LEMON. I was standing in the store for 90 minutes for Sprint on-site staff and telephone support to do something until it could have been easily resolved in one of two ways:

1. They should have given me the code to do a factory reset on my previous phone (they sure gave me the code after I got my refurbished unit a day later). I believe that would have solved all the problems of reactivating the old unit.
   
2. If the store and phone support unit knew that they could not get my old unit working, they should have just ordered me the replacement instead of making me even more upset at Sprint for placing me on hold for 20 MINUTES just to be told a replacement phone is coming.

Since I was told to mail back the alleged "broken" phone to Sprint, I was told in writing that I may get charged a $75 fee if they find out the phone actually works perfectly fine. Since I was originally told over the phone that it was inoperable, I hoped the escalation department noted that in my records. If I find a $75 fee on my bill, I'm going to contest the charges with the dumbest customer service agents on earth, and prepare to jump ship to another carrier.