Sprint's New Business Model
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Woe be it me to say this bit I think that it may be time for federal reregulation of the telecommunications industry both wired and wireless as it was back in the day. Telecom is very much a utility like gas, electriciy and water. Imagine if the customer service paradigm that Sprint/Nextel is using were adopted by you local electric utility. By this I mean if you called to report that your power was off say 3 times in a year they would disconnect you ... imagine that ... how about a water billing dispute arising because you filled up a new pool with 20,000 gallons of water ... fine I'll pay for the water but not the sewage fees ... imagine ... imagine ... imagine ...
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
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I'm not at all surprised by the stories about Sprint's customer service. It's particularly ironic that Sprint unilaterally chose to end service with customers, when the penalties if customers decide to do the same can be painful.
My first cell phone was with Sprint. The phone service was abysmal--somewhere around 75 percent of the calls didn't ring through. To be fair, coastal San Diego County tends to have some dead zones, but my coverage through Sprint was far and away the worst of anyone I knew.
After my contract was up, I decided to switch carriers. That's when the fun started. I was on the phone for 30 minutes, being transferred from person to person. First the lies: "you have to pay a cancellation fee." "no, my contract has expired." There was the claim I couldn't cancel because I owed them money. "My last payment was 10 days ago." When the third person said she was going to transfer the call, I said, "I am cancelling service. I will no longer pay you money." She transferred the call into limbo.
Sprint simply refused my request to cancel service, continued to bill me, then called me nightly demanding money. My comment of, "I cancelled service on August 10th and I owe you nothing" was met by, "You don't understand. You HAVE to pay us, or we'll ruin your credit."
The pattern of treatment from Sprint was consistently and pervasively bad; it wasn't one rogue CSR.
In contrast, I've had T-mobile for four years and the customer service has been stellar--all six times I've called.
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I don't think that Sprint is trying to get rid of customers with discounts... They just a month ago signed me up with pretty signifigant cuts over their standard rates:
Samsung M510 (in pink for her) phone, mp3, camera,etc. 500 mins a month, unl.text, unl. data, 7pm nights and weekends, ro roaming fees, free sprint to sprint, plus roadside assistants = $34 month.
Blackberry 8830 Worldphone - like above but no roadside... $30/month plus Unlimited Blackberry data $39/mon...
Phones were $50, and $150 respectively with no rebates. And actually there is a Kellogg's rebate out there for like $75... ANd I got $50 off each of the first 2 invoices.
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There are more effective ways to terminate a customer relationship.
Raise their rates for the service or product that you provide. Then the customer will decide when its time to go. Otherwise, you will cover the "inconvenience" cost of a customer that requires a little more hand holding then the rest.
The other way Sprint could handle its problems is to move their customer service to India (wait, that might be an improvement). Or just switch those that call more than once per month to there...
That should do the trick to get rid of pesky customers who call too much!
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There's something wrong with this story. Ever since I first read it - I've been calling their customer service continuously, and I still haven't received my letter yet. If you know - please - how is it I sign up for this automatic disenrollment?
What kills me with those yahoos is that every time you try to fix their account setup errors (they have a long track record with me of unilaterally "changing" what's on my account, dropping services without my permission, and billing me for the difference), they move your account setup date to today (thereby pushing your contract date out even further). No amount of kicking and screaming seems to fix that.
Verizon had their share of screwing up my bills, but they didn't have this slimy sliding contract deal sprint is doing....
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again? -
The soldiers reported having been Sprint Nextel customers for several years prior to this incident. When they arrived back in the States, Sprint Nextel was more than happy to upsell these soldiers an "unlimited roaming add-on" to their existing cell phone service. Then Sprint Nextel canceled the soldiers' service because... "they were roaming too much."
I don't see the "class" in selling a service to someone, and then trying to use legal loopholes to weasel out of a contract because you're not making as much money as you thought you were going to when you agreed to provide the service. I don't believe that poor planning by sales and marketing departments is a valid defense for... well, anything really... If Sprint Nextel does not want customers to "roam in an unlimited fashion", then the classy thing to do would be to stop selling people a service called "unlimited roaming". This ranks right up there with the invisible undercoating they'll be happy to sell you at the car dealership.
Either way though, the customers have largely spoken, and Sprint Nextel has come in *dead last* on several independent consumer studies in the past couple of years. On the J.D. Powers report they came in far behind everyone--even small regional wireless providers without Sprint's resources. That speaks volumes.
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It's been reported that they've grandfathered in some sort of long-term "loss-leader" contracts from back in the day just to keep their sales numbers up (those pesky shareholders want to see money coming in, after all). Apparently now that those customers have served their purpose (e.g., bump up the numbers for end of quarter/end of year, etc.), it's time to get rid of them... Personally I wouldn't put anything past a company that goes out of their way to unilaterally dump hundreds of customers en masse, just for calling customer service. Someone else mentioned better ways to do it - my favorite is attrition. Run out the contract, and at renewal time tell them they can't get that sweet deal they had on the previous contract. Too easy, one would think...
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I tend to agree with Mike on this one. Don't want to have people use "unlimited roaming", don't sell it. Or at least don't complain that you're losing money on some customers because of it. Honor the contract and decline to renew. That's what Cingular did with me.
There were really 2 problems here, one with the soldiers and one with others. Setting aside the others for now, the soldiers, or at least some, clearly checked the Sprint maps to see if West Point was included and it was. That is clearly a Sprint issue. They should not use those maps as sales material if they're not accurate. And these days accuracy should be fairly up to date. They can easily check on roaming calls by comparing the cell towers against their maps. If there's any chance of an issue, go check and then deal with it.
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From what I heard, their customer service of course has moved to our 'favorite' country - India. Usually if there is a problem, one phone call would solve the problem. Last time it took me 4 phone calls and still could not solve the problem, one thing was I did not understand what the other side was talking and they did not seem to understand what I was talking. So it seemed that I kept making customer service call. Anyway their service was lousy, I had to get out of my house to make a phone call !!! Who needs them anyway ? There are so many companies to choose.
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