If you are currently out of or nearing the end of your cell phone contract, be sure to consider the Sprint Employee Referral Offer, or SERO, plan. Although it has been heavily discussed for a while on many cellular enthusiast forums, actually getting on the plan used to require a referral from a Sprint Employee (duh), some smooth-talking over the phone, or the “borrowing” of a random employee e-mail from the internet. However, right now they have opened it up to the public, and I have gone ahead and jumped on it myself as it probably won’t last forever. Here are my experiences:

How to order
» Visit the Sprint SERO site.
» Type in either “savings@sprint.com” or “savings@sprintemi.com” in the box for Sprint Employee E-mail Address, along with your zip code.
» You should be greeted with the default offer shown to the right. However, you can choose from a variety of phones and plans to suit your needs and do all the ordering online. (If you don’t, the e-mails may have expired.)
» When you order, please note that you will be subjected to a hard credit pull just like with other carriers.

The plans all include such perks as free long distance, unlimited Sprint mobile-to-mobile, Unlimited Weekends and Nights starting at 7pm, and unlimited Power Vision (web, IM, e-mail). If you talk enough to make a prepaid plan too expensive, 500 anytime minutes for $30 plus taxes seems like a very good price. Two-year contract required, no activation fee.

Phones
The prices on phones are sometimes a good deal, but not always cheaper than other places. Although I have seen them offer free phones, I think they start at $20 now. You can compare with other sites, taking into the account the monthly savings on this plan.

I splurged and bought the Motorola Q for $100 because, well, I’m a geek and wanted to take advantage of the free data! Unlimited data alone costs $20-$50 a month on other carriers. It’s not quite a Treo and there is no touchscreen, but I can check my e-mail and also internet in a pinch. It’s quite thin, and overall I’m very happy with my new toy. 😀

Service
Although they do send it out via 2-Day FedEx, it took me about a week before they actually shipped my phone. However, there is a status website that keeps you relatively well-informed. It should be noted that InPhonic (WireFly.com) is the outsourced provider that you’ll actually be dealing with during the initial purchase, not Sprint. They aren’t the best from what I’ve read, so if you are going to port your existing number, it may be a good idea to do it yourself through Spring customer service once you’ve gotten the phone. It took me only minutes and I just needed my old account number. In the meantime, they’ll just assign you another number.

As for Sprint’s service, they’ve been very good so far. My hold times have been pretty short, the CSRs have been nice. Coverage will vary for everyone, but mine has been adequate. There is also a 30-day guarantee just in case it isn’t.

Other notes
» You can still add any corporate or student discounts to your plan, bringing the overall price down even lower. If you are a student, call 1-866-853-4931, hit 1, and ask about your specific university. I ended up with 10% off.
» You can’t add a cheap 2nd line on these plans. This is important to note for non-single folks, because our old Cingular family line plan was actually very comparable to the SERO price. We used to share 800 minutes for $68 total a month after discounts. Now we have 500 minutes each for about $64 total per month. ($30 x 2 – 10% discount + $5 taxes per line.) The only real difference in service is the free data.
» If you experience a dropped call, you can dial *2 on your phone, say “dropped call”, and they will credit 50 cents on your account.

» After you get the phone, you can also call in for a free $25 debit card if you give them your new phone number and another referring person’s Nextel/Sprint PCS number. The other person will get $25 too. I referred my wife and we both got $25. If would like a number to use for a referral, you can contact me with your new cell phone number.

For more information, you can join the (long and often tedious) ongoing discussions at SprintUsers, Slickdeals, Fatwallet, or Howard Forums. If you are currently in a Sprint contract, you may want to read this post for some tips.

Wowio is a website that lets you download eBooks from their library for free. They are in Adobe Acrobat format, so don’t need any special software to read them. There’s also no annoying DRM, so you can move them between computers and PDAs with ease.

What’s the catch? Well, the titles are limited, so you’re not going to get the current New York Times bestseller. But they do have a wide selection, from classics to comic books (I mean, graphic novels!). Here are the titles I downloaded today (you get five each day):

• Avant-Guide Las Vegas: Insiders Guide for Urban Adventurers (Travel Guide)
• Critique 01: The Magazine of Graphic Design Thinking
• Guerrilla Data Analysis Using Microsoft Excel
• The Science of Getting Rich (supposedly inspired The Secret)
• Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Basically, check it out, and if nothing catches your eye, don’t join. Can’t beat free. I think they also make money by putting ads in the books, but they must be spaced pretty far apart. I’m about 50 pages into Slaughter-House Five and haven’t seen one yet.

To join, you must verify your identity. It’s relatively painless, you only need one of the following:

• A non-anonymous e-mail address (no yahoo, hotmail, or gmail). A work or school e-mail should work fine, and they also accepted my @mymoneyblog.com e-mail.
• Credit card – will not be charged
• Scan of ID (Driver’s License or Student ID) – I’d probably avoid this. At least with the credit card you have built-in fraud protection.
• Friends and Family code – Each new member can “vouch” for 3 others who don’t want to or can’t do one of the above.

Right now, they are also having a promotion that if you refer 10 of your friends, they will send you a free iPod shuffle. This is actually a pretty easy deal, as it’s absolutely free to join and you don’t even need a credit card number. When you sign up, at the end they will ask you for the e-mail of the person who referred you.

Please don’t use my e-mail, I already have enough referrals. Below is a script that will return a random e-mail that you should use as your referrer in order help a fellow reader out. Then, I will ask them who used their e-mails as a referral, so you’ll have a chance to be listed.

I’ll make it an image scramble it to avoid spam, but you can also let me know if you don’t want me to put your e-mail up. Thanks!