I am writing this letter to bring to the attention of the media the incredibly poor service that Sprint PCS gives to its customers in the Madison area. I also have had many other problems with this company in the past.

Currently many UW students have moved back to Madison to find that their Sprint PCS phones no longer function as promised. I personally, along with two of my roommates, cannot receive calls on my phone. It also takes several minutes of trying over and over to dial out on the phone. If anyone ever calls you, or you call a Sprint customer, you are not going to be able to talk to a live voice. I would say that 90 percent of the time I have to leave a voicemail. During the weekends it is almost impossible to use their network, and the vast majority of students play “voicemail tag.”

This is a huge problem, because many students either rely on their cell phone as a main phone, or still not have not had their home phone line installed. You can ask any student that uses Sprint PCS, and they will all tell you the same story.

Meanwhile, everyone complains to the company (which always entails waiting on hold for at least 45 minutes), and their response is that they have “experts” working on it. How are experts going to fix this? I’m an engineering student, but I’m sure any person off the street could figure out that they need to broaden their coverage by installing more cells.

I’m stuck with a phone that basically doesn’t have the ability to receive calls and takes 10 minutes of trying to call someone else. My next step is to round up as many students as possible and complain to Sprint’s regulatory agency and the media. I figure in Madison, all I have to do is go out on a Friday night and spot all the people on State Street swearing because they can’t get a hold of their friends.