As a Sprint rep, I resent that. You may have had a bad experience with somebody on the phone, but to generalize all Sprint (or Verizon for that matter) employees as dicks is not appropriate.
I am talking about the control carriers used to exert on hardware manufacturers like Motorola, Nokia, etc... Whereas you could get the same device in Europe or the US, but the US version would be crippled because the carriers only wanted you to get ringtones from their store, wanted you to pay extra for bluetooth, and wanted an ad on the start page.
Which means you couldn't use Motorola software to backup your device, somtimes you couldn't run Java apps, and so many other problems.
I suggest it was Apple's iPhone which put an end to this madness, just as I said in my first comment.
Apple had little clout at the time, and only ATT was willing to working with them. For now, they are still stuck with each other.
While Verizon/Spring may have better coverage in certain areas, they are complete dicks.