Tired of complaining to Sprint? They’re tired of you, too
45 comments
Filed in News, Sprint
Most people have glaring complaints about their wireless carrier. A couple bad experiences and the venom sprays pretty easily when asked, "what carrier are you with?" Well, if you have too many issues with Sprint, and call to get them resolved, Sprint might actually drop you as a subscriber. The theory is that, by dropping over 220,000 of their highest-maintenance clients, Sprint would be saving resources. Apparently, they’re ignoring the fact that 220,000 bad-words-of-mouth can be a pretty powerful thing, especially when, as their "high-maintenance" customers, they’re willing to speak their mind when they’re upset. Good luck with that, Sprint.
[Via Tech Digest]
These guys just can’t screw-up enough… sheeesh…
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No, you guys are missing it, I think this is a great idea!
You want to get out of your contract without paying the dreaded early termination fee just bug the hell out of them and they’ll help you leave!
People who are sitting on the fence for the iPhone because it is not on their network can just bug whoever is their current carrier so they will be free to switch to AT&T without the penalty.
See?
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It’s not like it messes up your credit score or anything.
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This is both good and bad….
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They can do what they want, but they’ll find it’s bad for business. This only reinforces the idea that Sprint has bad customer service. It will create bad word of mouth. And it will make their customers think twice before spending $400+ on a phone that Sprint might brick in a month if they screw up your bill too many times.
I’m a longtime customer with a Treo 700p. I was thinking about upgrading to the 755p, but there’s no way I’ll do that now since they may decide to boot me in a month regardless. Now I’m much more likely to wait for my contract to expire then consider an iPhone on AT&T or stick with the Treo on another carrier.
This action will make Sprint less profitable in the long run. If I were a stockholder, I’d be pissed.
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wow.
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That letter doesn’t look too ‘official’. No Sprint address, no one’s name, nothing.
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Call the 877 number for those who think its not official.”
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I think it is simply funny how they have created / enabled a back door out clause without having to pay the early termination fee to any Sprint customer willing to bug them enough.
My early termination fee with AT&T is $175. If I wanted to switch to Sprint, I’d have to wait a year to avoid the fee.
But I could be out inside of 3 months by making some phone calls?!?!
I’m not saying I would do it (I’m too lazy for all of that), I’m just saying it could be a good way to go if you wanted to save some cash and get out of your Sprint contract sooner rather than later.
Who cares about their stockholders or Sprint’s long term profitability?
You want out, here’s your free pass.
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You have to figure on the negative effect of sending all those…uh…’contact rich’ customers to those other companies - it’s like the old days of catapulting a disease-infested corpse into a castle you were besieging.
But what an incredibly interesting statement about customer service in 2007. It used to be ‘The Customer is Always Right’, now it’s ‘Earn The Right to Be Our Customer.’
Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the teachers decided to eat all the detention students. :/
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my problem is I can’t just write sprint a letter saying “your too much trouble, so I have decided to end my contract and not charge you an ETF” so why should they be able to do it to me?
Im sure I’ll get flamed by all the fan boys for this one, but I really think this is just another nail in a dying carriers coffin…
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That does not look like an official letter to me either. I have received letters from them about service. First of all it would have the name of a person at the bottom and it would have some kind of address on the letter. If it is a hoax we will here from Sprint very shortly.
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It doesn’t look too official to me either. I wish it would. It would be amazing to me if a company had the balls to drop a customer that is just nagging all the time. Of course a customer is always right, but how many people keep calling retentions to try and get a better deal? To try and get on the SERO plan or to try and get a phone for free? If I had a customer like that I would make it easy for them to leave by waiving their ETF. Go bother somebody else.
I have Sprint as a carrier, I just signed up with them. I spent almost 4 hours on the phone trying to get the right plan activated on my account. In the end they made everything right. Maybe I’m too patient. I don’t expect to be needing to call them too much in the future, starting service is complicated so I would say most people will always have an issue when they first start service. We’ll see how billing is, last time I had them I canceled within the 30 day trial period and was not charged anything that wasn’t fair. I also have T-Mobile and AT&T and AT&T is worse than Sprint, everyone I talked to was helpful, it wasn’t their fault they didn’t have the permissions to modify my account to enable the SERO plan.
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The letter does look a little “suspect”, but Sprint reps have confirmed this to CNET. It is definitely official!
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It is official. I actually just spoke to a close friend who is a high up at Sprint.
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If only complaing was always this fun.
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I am Sprint customer considering moving to at&t not for the iphone but for the curve. I find it strange that they have only dummy phones in the stores. How do you get a feel for a product like this if you can’t try the real thing in the store. How do I know this is how the keys feel on the real phone versus the dummy phone. AT&T does have plans that I find attractive now. This is getting confusing and frustrating.
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So does this mean they pay you an early termination fee for breaking the contract?
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Going to have to disagree with you, Jorge. I have had AT&T for about 7 years now and have made probably a couple dozen changes to my account with barely a glitch. Even when they made mistakes with my rate plan which I would discover a month or two later, they were great about going back and re-rating it. And they didn’t make me feel like a criminal in the process.
Sprint totally tried to hose me. They double billed me for months and then when I tried to get it fixed, they could never get it right. I finally cancelled with them and they tried to charge me some $1,100 saying my account was still billing!!! Heck of a trick considering the phone was dead as a brick. I would rather have a root canal than go back to Sprint.
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i have to laugh when i see this type of thing. if AT&T or even lord help us Verizon did a similar thing thing all of the interweb would be abuzz with class action this and such and such sucks etc. It just amazes me how loyal people seem to these companies that obviuosly couldn’t care less.
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its not surprising, they are really the worst, and just they are rude as hell, i cancel my contract last year after 5 years of service with them, i could not take the drop call anymore, when i asked
to speak with a supervisor, she clearly said that i was welcome to leave and that nothing was being done to adress those issues, i then contacted verizon they laugh they said dont worry about them you will received 3 new lines by the morning and upon receiving it your # will be ported right away, am just so lucky not to be a sprint nextel shareholder at this moment
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I wouldn’t necessarily call it carrier loyalty. I think of it more about personal experiences. I am with AT&T and my experience has been good. Best carrier I ever had was Verizon, but they are wicked expensive. I hate Sprint and T-Mobile’s coverage isn’t everywhere I need to be, so AT&T was a good compromise for me.
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JJLO Said:
I am Sprint customer considering moving to at&t not for the iphone but for the curve. I find it strange that they have only dummy phones in the stores. How do you get a feel for a product like this if you can’t try the real thing in the store. How do I know this is how the keys feel on the real phone versus the dummy phone. AT&T does have plans that I find attractive now. This is getting confusing and frustrating.
JJLO: if you go to a corporate AT&T store, they have live demo cell phones for you to play with. i work at a corporate AT&T store so i know how it is…
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HAHAHA Good luck with that is right! Sprint must be on crack. Ah well, they were never a good carrier and i’m sure when they lose business the competition will rejoice!
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Thanks Connie. I thought I was in a corp at&T store. How can I verify that it a corp store?
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