I met with Donald Alden Smith yesterday at Yellow Wood Coffee & Tea in Alamo, CA. Yellow Wood is a freat little coffee shop that I was unaware of. It is located in the Alamo Plaza along with Safeway on Danville Boulevard.

Unfortunately, YellowWood’s website does not do justice to their ambience. Yellow Wood is much more comfortable than any Starbucks or Peet’s that I have visited.

Don is a member of the Keiretsu Forum, an angel investment group. I was kicking a few ideas around with Don, one of which might have qualified for some angel investing – but now, I think not.

I met Don last Friday at Barnes & Noble in Walnut Creek. I was having a cup of coffee there and he was at the next table with a huge stack of books. The books were all focused on marketing, one of my favorite subjects – so, I struck up a conversation which led to yesterday’s meeting at Yellow Wood Coffee.

I’ll be going back to Yellow Wood. Since I have a Sprint AirCard, I did not check to see if they had WiFi. They do however, have live music and wine on most Fridays and Saturdays.

I want my Verizon back! A year ago I switched to Sprint after joining Craig and Tracey in their real estate business. Since we were going to leverage technology as much as possible, we decided to get Treos and stay with Sprint, C&T’s service instead of Verizon (my service).

The decision was based on monthly service fees. In the last year of using Sprint, I run into one reason after another to want to sprint back to Verizon.

Here are the Top 3 Reasons to Sprint back to Verizon:

• Customer Service – I’m only one customer, but in my dealings with the customer service departments of both companies – Verizon wins hands down. Verizon customer service reps seem to have some power to actually help the customer whereas Sprint has the old fashion customer service – here’s how it is and I can’t do anything about it – is there anything else we can’t help you with today?
• Coverage – The last time I saw a roaming signal on my Verizon phone, I was in the middle of the Nevada desert. Here, in the Bay Area with Sprint, the word spotty seems to apply to the Sprint network.
• Text Messaging – I was surprised to find $30 extra on my bill for last month. Tracking it down, I find Sprint was charging me $.15 for every text message I was sending (can you spell GOUGING). I had never used text messaging before, but a situation arose that had me sending 6 to 10 a day for a couple of weeks. In checking with Sprint for their monthly charge for unlimited text messaging I find it is $15 a month – a little pricey since everyone else I know seems to get it free or for $5 a month.

It’s just one person’s experience, but if you’re considering moving from Verizon to Sprint my suggestion is – SNAP OUT OF IT!

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