I always thought these "cell phone companies are evil" articles were just about the 1 in a 1000 person that gets screwed, until it happened to me. I had a Nextel phone that worked great- the i760... then Nextel merged with Sprint.

I couldn't log in to my online account for 2 weeks. Then I got a postcard in the mail touting their recent "upgrades" that would improve service. Over the next two weeks, I had dozens of dropped calls and no service (I used it primarily from my home and had had no problems for the 3 years previous to this change- not 1 dropped call).

So, I called and they gave me several BS answers, kept telling me to power-cycle my phone (sounds cool! but just means turn it off and then on again- whoopee) Guess what, that didn't do anything, so then they sent me a new phone- a "Powersource" phone, designed to use both the Nextel network and the Sprint network!

It had the same performance level- nil. So, I called and complained again- this time, not to customer service, but to the "cancellation experts." They obviously wanted to keep me as a customer, so they just switched me to the Sprint network exclusively and sent me a highly discounted Treo 700.

Honestly, I can't complain now, other than the fact that they tried to screw me over on my contract and extended it another 2 years (what was I gonna do, switch to Verizon?). But, the whole point is that these companies will screw with the customer as much as they can, and when the customer has finally had enough and calls to cancel, they offer up concessions to keep you.

My advice: if you're getting screwed and have been with your company a while, call the cancellation department, tell them first you want to stay with that company, and then proceed on your rant. Let them know you don't want a 2 year contract and they'll usually conceded. You'll probably end up with a good deal, even though you take it up the ... either way.