I’ll try to keep my blog posts concise, useful and for the most part,
positive. But I’ve had enough frustrating experiences with large
corporations like Circuit City, Cox Communications and now Sprint where they think they can trample the little guy and there will be no repercussions.
I reserve this small corner of the web to use my humble publishing abilities to expose some of these
customer service atrocities in hopes that others can have a peek at how these companies do
business before deciding to become a customer themselves. this is a repost of a note I just sent to a local arizona
internet professionals list i’m on here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/azipa/message/33153
**********snip***********
i have been customer of sprint for 3yrs- never once late on a payment.
just this last month i switched online billpay services and in doing
so made an honest mistake in entering the address incorrectly for my
sprint bill. the payment went out on time, just went to their
corporate headquarters instead of their PO Box. i received notice
from them via mail and within 3 days took corrective action and resent
payment to the proper address (1/18/05). yesterday I get a text
message sent to my phone indicating that I needed to take immediate
action to prevent interruption of my cel service. I called their
support line per the instructions and spent no less than 30min being
bounced from automated phone system to annoying automated phone system
entering my phone number each time and of course having to repeat it
to each person that answered the line before being redirected to the
next automated system. all told i waited on hold for a human for
probably 45min. I finally reached an operator, explained the
situation and paid the remainder of the balance with my credit card. i
was assured that my service would remain uninterrupted. okay, no
sweat.
this evening they suspended my service and now any number i dial gets
forwarded to their collections department where they demand I pay the
reminder of my bill on my creditcard. having already sent the check 5
days ago, spent 45min yesterday and another 30min this evening, I have
no desire to now pay this bill via cc only to have their processing
dept deposit my check tomorrow and double-bill me, so i refused. i was
patient with everyone i talked to this evening and 30min into it when
I was talking finally w/ a supervisor who probably had the authority
to do something, my cel died from lack of batteries. now I don’t know
what three years of loyalty to their service and making religious
on-time payments means to them, but I have to know that if were i
sitting in a room face-to-face explaining the situation, they would be
no "let me forward you to the appropriate department", they would hear
my explanation and reinstate service and all would be fine. These
CSR’s seem to have no motivation to solve the customer’s problem or
SERVICE the customer at all, rather the goal is to stick as closely to
the playbook scripts they are given so that if their call is monitored
for quality assurance, it meets the guidelines and they keep their
robotic job. what’s ironic is i’ll undoubtedly be charged on my next
bill for the 100minutes I have spent this weekend on the phone trying
to resolve this problem.
Anyone who relies on their cel as their sole number will relate to how
much of a colossal inconvenience it is to have your number shut off.
As soon as I have service again the first call I will be making will
be to another provider. number portability baby. the question is,
which one? Can anyone recommend a carrier they are happy with? some
place where (even if it costs more) you talk to a human being who ACTS
like a human and not an automaton? Does anyone write that cellphone
bill check and feel like their getting their money’s-worth each month?
and also, I know there’s a verizon rep on this list- if there’s by any
chance a sprint rep listening- how the heck can you refer to this
system as customer SERVICE? can’t we at least call it what it is:
customer inconvenience, customer strip search or something equally as
humiliating and degrading?
okay i’m done now. feel free to forward this to anyone who you know
that might be considering sprint. it’s just not worth it. next time
you’re chosing cel providers remember this simple equation:
sprint=$#%@
sean