Lawsuit alleges poor service in A2 for students with Sprint PCS

By Louie Meizlish

Daily Staff Reporter

Many Sprint PCS customers at the University have become so unhappy with their cellular provider that they decided to join a lawsuit against the company.

The lawsuit, filed last week, alleges the phones do not work in Ann Arbor, contrary to Sprint's advertisements which list the city as one of its service areas. "Everywhere I go my phone works, except in Ann Arbor," said Kevin Atto, an LSA junior who is a plaintiff in the case. "Wherever you are in Ann Arbor, you can't get a signal."

Atto said he complained to the company and received extra minutes of airtime but questioned "what's the use of minutes if I can't get a signal?"

Southfield attorney William Stern filed the complaint in Washtenaw County Circuit Court on behalf of 72 Sprint PCS customers, a majority of them being University students. Stern is requesting the lawsuit be classified as class-action, whereby all similarly affected Sprint PCS customers would become part.

The complaint, which officially begins the lawsuit, requests the plaintiffs be relieved from their monthly service requirements and that Sprint PCS cellular phone customers who use their phone for six or more months per year be reimbursed the cost of the phone and accessories. They also are requesting that Sprint stop claiming the phones will work in Ann Arbor.

"They promised good service. They advertised quality," said Stern, whose son Jeremy, a Kinesiology sophomore, is one of the plaintiffs.

Sprint officials said they are aware of problems and are attempting to fix them. "In the fall we had a number of out-of-state students descend on Ann Arbor. We didn't know that they would be living in Ann Arbor," said Tony Lent, Sprint PCS area vice president for the Great Lakes Area. "Once we realized that, we took aggressive measures" to correct the problem.

Other students in the lawsuit claim they get "network busy" messages when attempting to make calls or that phone calls are cut off when they move beyond the range of Sprint's cell towers.

Changing providers is not as easy as it sounds, the plaintiffs said. Some have committed to a 12-month plan in which they pay penalties for attempting to quit service. Others are not committed to those type of plans but have purchased equipment that is only compatible with Sprint. "If I dropped the plan I'd have a two- or three-hundred dollar phone that I can't use," Engineering senior David Barkovic said. "I am not hell-bent on getting refunds, I just want improved service."

Lent said Sprint added power amplifiers to the Ann Arbor cell site and additional channel elements so more calls can be processed. "We also added more network overlays, which have greatly reduced the number of outages," Lent said.

Sprint plans to place another cell site on top of the University Towers apartment building within the next two weeks and on West Stadium Boulevard and Manchester Road within months, he said.

"Our service has greatly improved since the beginning of this semester," Lent said. "The percent of blockages has gone down by 80 percent."

Some of the plaintiffs are lukewarm on that claim. "It's slightly better, but it's still pretty bad," Art and Design sophomore Tara George said.