The first 15 days: Is the Palm Pre better than Sprint is bad?

If there was a more remarkable idea circulating in the gadget-head community back in January than Palm's got a scorching-hot new phone on the way, it was, "And they chose Sprint as the launch partner".

Seriously, Sprint? Necessary only-major-mobile-provider-in-the-heartland evil to tens of thousands of mobile-phone users? Whatever Dan Hesse was saying about customer service in those moodily lit black-and-white commercials, the prospect of putting Sprint in charge of selling the odd, pretty, pricey little Palm Pre was wince-inducing.

But if there's anything sweeter than a comeback story, it's two comeback stories. And so many observers took heart from reports that Sprint was intent on being in fighting trim for the launch -- special training for in-store device "advocates," the ReadyNow no-customer-left-behind push, and so forth. Among those observers was your reporter, a Sprint customer for over a decade who would really, really like her mobile provider to not screw this up.

So the Pre has been out for a little over two weeks, and I've had mine in hand for a week. Every hope I had for the handset has been met -- it's a joy to use, a beauty, the One True Phone that's likely to have me abandoning my long-suffering Sidekicks after all these years. I await more toys in the Apps Store and I wish battery life were better, but it was worth the wait.

And after seeing Sprint's execution on its end of the bargain, I wish I'd waited 'til next year and gotten it from Verizon. After the promises of better customer service in general and laser-like focus on the Pre experience in particular, Sprint seems to be not just as bad as ever but -- due to the phone's unique nature -- just a bit worse.

Let me tell you about my Pre buying experience. Settle in, honey.

Act One: In which we seek a rare gadget and end up in the food court

The calendar over my desk has a big red circle around June 14, and FREE FROM B'BERRY! written in the box. The Pearl was never a good match for me, with its tiny screen and peculiar keypad, but I wanted to give it precisely a year from the date I purchased it -- to be sure I get whatever rebates might apply, and to give the local Sprint stores a chance to restock their Pre supplies after the launch on June 6. I'm not buying "a new phone," after all -- I've already made my decision, even handled an early prototype, and I'm waiting for precisely that phone.

But it's June 14, and the Sprint store downtown is still out of Pres. But I call around, and I find one at the Sprint kiosk at the big mall in my part of town.

This is where it all goes wrong. (And yet you've so much article ahead of you!) What I didn't know then is that, although Sprint had big things to say about how customer service on the Pre would be of unparalleled quality, with in-store "advocates" specially trained on the device, the fact is that the system only applies to the company stores, and I'm heading toward a kiosk. Though it carries Sprint branding, sells Sprint phones, and hands me Sprint contracts to sign, a kiosk is not an official Sprint entity.

I'm going to suffer for not knowing this.

The mall is jumping on a late Sunday afternoon, and the food court (which is where the kiosk is located) sounds like a school lunchroom with no monitors to shush the rowdies. There's a line at the kiosk and one salesgirl working, so I content myself with people-watching and get to the desk in about 40 minutes. Dessetta, the salesgirl, is a little rushed -- she has staff training in about an hour, and the other clerk on duty has disappeared into the sunlight outside -- but I know the phone I want, so we get right down to business.

At this point I should mention two things: 1. I share a mondo-minutes account with a few of my relatives back home, and 2. My brother used to work for Sprint, years ago. Dessetta and I were talking about that while she set up my phone, because all those phone lines can be confusing. I cautioned her to watch out for the other Angela on the account -- my family has a shocking lack of imagination when it comes to names -- and repeated my number, which begins with an area code different from the others on the account.

We wrapped up the sale. I asked about a buyback for my hated BlackBerry, and Dessetta's manager -- he'd wandered over late in the process -- said he could give me $20 store credit, but with no TouchStone chargers available yet (the only other thing I wanted) I should probably just wait and come back. The kiosk doesn't have any special screen protectors for the phone, but Dessetta sells me a five-pack of those trim-your-own protectors. I promise Dessetta that if Sprint's customer-satisfaction people phoned me I would indeed give her "a five" (the system's top rating), and I took my phone to a quiet corner to start checking it out.

Already in our story, things are starting to deviate from the script. In theory, had I been at a real Sprint store (instead of a shop that simply has signage like, offers products like, and enters into legal contracts like one) I would have been trained on the phone, to be sure I know how to use all the cool features. ReadyNow, they call it.

However, I didn't think much of that omission; I made it clear that I knew a lot about the Pre already, and my overworked salesgirl was in a hurry to close. And so I'm on my own and walking home when the phone rings... the BlackBerry in my bag, the one that should have been deactivated. My Pre, in my hand, is silent. I check the configuration on the Pre. It's set to my brother's phone number.

My brother is in Nebraska, but as of the moment Dessetta configured my Pre, his phone is effectively in Seattle.

I might want to look into that.

Act Two: In which we are helped by kindly faceless individuals

I call my brother on his house phone and explain the problem. After the momentary weirdness of seeing his own phone come up on Caller ID, we work out that tech support will probably need to speak to both of us, since (again) we all share an account. I call in. I get cut off. I call back. I get "Michael." "Michael" -- I've changed his name -- is going to be the only bright spot of this story, so pay attention.

Michael's a funny guy, and he thinks I'm funny too; Michael and my brother can bond over Sprint work life, so they've got that going for them. The fix is a bit tricky; I have to shut off my phone (and borrow my housemate's; mine is not a landline house), we have to reset parts of the account, we have a lot to do... and as Michael tells us, he's not really trained on the Pre. Tech support has, he says, been told to send callers asking about the Pre directly to the stores, and he warns me that anything he does might cause problems when I file for the $100 mail-in rebate on this $300 phone. But he understands why my brother and I might not want to wait for Monday morning to get the phone number confusion straightened out, and so 85 minutes later, my brother's number rings on his phone in Nebraska, not mine in Seattle.

That fixes the urgent problem, but the Pre still isn't working. Michael offers to transfer me from his line in Texas to a higher-level tech support facility in Florida. He does... and the call drops again. I call back a third time, get transferred again to another tech, who tells me that to do the tech support we'd have to use Sprint's online chat function, which has just shut down for the night. Call back tomorrow.

If I can't play with the pretty new phone, I can at least start trimming down screen protectors to put on it. After a couple of tries at getting the openings located correctly and the curved corners right, I give up and leave on the light plastic film it shipped with.

Entr'acte: In which we are cast out into the wide world

"Ma'am, I'm going to have to send you to the store. We can't do anything from here," said the person on the other end of the tech-support line. "We're not trained on the Pre. Take it on in and they can fix this right away."

"Should I go back to the kiosk, or should I go downtown to the big store?"

"Well, I can't actually say, but..."

"I should go to the store, in other words."

The faintest of chuckles. "Good luck, ma'am."

NEXT: "My Name is Nobody"...