Sprint hit with lawsuit over handset locking
Looks like Sprint sure has its share of headaches these days. After giving its customers a surprise (and a way out of their contracts) with its SMS rate hikes, the company's now being hit with a class action lawsuit over handset locking. The suit, filed in the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda, alleges that Sprint violated California law by locking its handsets to make it difficult for customers to switch carriers without buying a new phone, as well as by failing to disclose that the handsets were locked in the first place. If you have a California billing address for either a Sprint personal or business account and purchased a handset between August 28, 1999 and September 21, 2006, then you're covered by the lawsuit and don't have to do anything. However, if you want to be excluded from the lawsuit, and retain the right to sue Sprint for yourself (how dare they carrier-lock their phones!), you'll have to fill out an exclusion request form (available on the site linked below) and mail it postmarked no later than December 7th, 2006. But fair warning -- if you go that route, you'll be shut out of any money or lavish benefits that may be awarded as a result of the class action lawsuit.[Thanks, Corey Flood]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Lib @ Oct 10th 2006 2:45PM
AND the other carriers DONT!!!
Scott @ Oct 10th 2006 3:02PM
Ok, so las time I checked, there was no benefit for their phones to be unlocked. You would only be able to use them on another CDMA carrier, and even that would be dificult since that carrier would have to load the ESN into their servers. I don't know of any carrier that is willing to do that for an individual customer. If they were GSM, I would inderstand this lawsuit. Someone should be filing a lawsuit against Cingular for this one!!!!
mr. mario @ Oct 10th 2006 3:44PM
Sweet!!!
I got out of my VZW contract because of the v710 lawsuit and bought this sweet Sprint phone with all the EV-DO love and now I might be able to get some mo' freebies. I'm much happy right now... although I did diddly to earn this. :/
cingular-user @ Oct 10th 2006 4:05PM
OMG... is Cingular next? Please?
WirelessGuy @ Oct 10th 2006 4:09PM
There is a huge benefit of locking these phones. First, they subsidize every unit they sell by at least $150. So by locking the phone to only work on their network, they prevent you from buying the phone then moving to another carrier. This is especially important for Pre-Paid phones which also carry a subsidy and therefore protect the carrier's investment in the devices.
Verizon allows any phone with a range of ESNs to be activated on their network, so if there is a manufacturer for Sprint and Verizon you will likely be able to activate any sprint phone on Verizon. Same goes for US Cellular, Leap and MetroPCS. Those companies love when people bring their own phone as the cost of aquiring that subscriber just went down by at least $150, so they profit from you. Plus they will lock you into a two year contract (most of them) and what did you get for that???? Nothing.
What people don't realize if that if the carriers cannot protect these phones subsidy, then they will just stop subsidizing the phones and you won't get any more at $29 a piece.
Stef @ Oct 10th 2006 4:14PM
I can't beleive theirs a lawsuit over that. Here in the UK its more or less standard for handsets to be locked to your network.
Phone Nerd @ Oct 10th 2006 4:49PM
ok, not unlocking handsets is one thing (I understand the reasoning behind it) but suing for not disclosing that the phones were locked in the first place...... come on John Q Public. It runs along the same lines as suing McDonalds for not knowing that coffee was hot.
RedmondCooper @ Oct 10th 2006 5:58PM
Damnit, the mcdonalds coffee case was because the coffee was scalding hot. You chastise the public for ignorance then spout off your own ignorant drivel. You are no better if not worse than those you chastise.
Burger King @ Oct 10th 2006 6:26PM
Not for notthing this seems like a really stupid law suit CDMA phones have been lock for side service provider for years. A few reason why they lock phones first is the software a sprint phone Vison features are Jave in nature. Verizon Wireless, Alltel, USC and a few others use BREW. So that right there you lose all of those features like games, web and even pictures and text messaging. Yes you can always flash a phone with the other service providers software to enable those featuers but at that point that would be a waste of time. So these people will win just because its like the V710 law suit it was stupid to start with but they won in the end.
dave @ Oct 10th 2006 6:52PM
what the fuck?!? unlocked CDMA phones aren't very useful in the US, because our CDMA phones don't have R-UIM cards and thus need to actually have ESN resets to switch carriers. And guess what, by changing the ESN and setting the phone to 'roaming only', you can use the voice features on any CDMA network you sign up with. I've seen samsung blades reprogrammed for alltel and VZ.
and every US carrier I know of locks their phones, except waitwaitwait...sprint doesn't lock the GSM function on their international phones.
TELL THE STUPID CUSTOMERS THEY'RE GONNA LOSE THE LAWSUIT. I thought sprint had smart customers, now I feel disgraced.
Nick @ Oct 10th 2006 9:54PM
Since people can't apparently read, the article says that Sprint didn't disclose that the phones are locked. It's pretty much common knowledge that Cingular and T-Mobile lock their phones. People are agreeing to that because they know about it.
Donald @ Oct 10th 2006 10:50PM
"Someone should be filing a lawsuit against Cingular for this one!!!!"
Except you can request an unlock code from Cingular (and T-Mobile) for their handsets.
falcompsx @ Oct 11th 2006 12:18AM
i dont care about locking, but i hope this hurts sprint and puts them closer to going out of business! down with sprint!
John Q. Public @ Oct 11th 2006 4:15AM
The V710 lawsuit was entirely different, Verizon advertised their brand spanking new high end phone as having Bluetooth, but failed to include the fact that everything but the headset and dun profiles were disabled. That is indeed lawsuit worthy and the right side won. This one however is just stupid.
dave @ Oct 25th 2006 6:56PM
and falcompsx, shut up. i have sprint and it's great, my phone is amazing, the service is top-notch, yeah they bumped my texting rates up but not a big deal because 9 months out of a year i won't send or recieve any text messages, and if you're going to sue someone for locking their handsets, you're pathetic, every mobile operator in the WORLD does it and if you don't like it, buy the phone direct from the manufacturer.
if this works, i'm going to sue t-mo for locking my dad's old nokia 6600, get big money for it, unlock it myself and sell it for more money.
Keren @ Nov 13th 2007 12:48AM
I don't know why any of you people don't understand why any phone carrier should have the right to lock any phone. Perhaps you just don't care as much because you simply get the cheapest phone and your investment is nothing to write home to mom about in the first place. However, if you are the type of customer who purchases a PDA phone for hundreds of dollars like the Treo 700p for example; it is completely bullshit that I cannot use that Treo with any carrier that offers that phone. Why should I be punished as a customer by losing out on the hundreds of dollars I spent to purchase the phone just because the service I was receiving from the carrier I purchased the phone with was so terrible. If I own the Treo, I own the Treo. Period. If I want to change carriers, I should be able to keep my phone and bring it to what ever carrier I want to as long as the phone is supported by that company. That would be ludicrous to have to purchase the same phone for another $500 just because I went with another carrier. It is my phone and I spent a great deal of money on it. I am not saying every carrier needs to support that phone but if you do support it, there is absolutely no reason why I cannot use the same phone. Most people only want to switch carriers when they have experienced negative service. The problem ultimately lies in the carriers hands. Provide exceptional service from the get go and you won't have to even worry about people wanting to switch carriers. It is called CAUSE and EFFECT. But that phone is still mine!