[toviaheli]

Woweee. Look what I started!

Here's an update! I did NOT go on my business trip without a phone. Here is what happened:

I started complaining and speaking to a lot of people at Sprint. It was 10-12 hours on the phone, lots of different areas, no progress. I tried emailing Sprint's eservice people. Tier 3 started off promising, but then died. A list that Courtney (Wideawake's fiancé), provided me was helpful for a good chunk of those conversations, but what really opened the door was remembering that over in the Mogul forum someone posted an email exchange with a VP at Sprint named, Jerry. I tracked it down, tracked down the guys email and his direct office line. Here's the exchange:

My Email/Voice Mail:
"Mr. Adriano,

I just had a horrendous experience with my Sprint Store...and with Retention [and Asurion, and eCare].

I do not understand:
1) Why I cannot have my warranty replacement phone mailed to me anywhere I want it mailed? I travel for business and can't always be at home to pick up a phone in-store! I do radio, television and newspaper interviews with this Sprint phone all the time. I need something dependable. I need shipping to wherever I am working from at any given time.
2) Sometimes a 3-5 day waiting period is way too much! Sometimes I need an overnight shipment from Sprint. I really do have people calling me talking suicide in the middle of the night. What if my phone isn't dependable because of defect (like it is now), and I'm told I have to wait 3-5 business days for a replacement? What happens when the suicidal [person] on the other end of the phone thinks I just hung up on them and kills themselves? All because I have no choice but to wait 3-5 business days for a phone?
3) Why did Retentions make me pay $300 for a Mogul to be shipped to me, plus a new two year contact when all I want is my warranty replacement mailed to me where I am going to be working for the next ten days? I did not want a new two year contract, nor to buy a new Mogul that has problems with it's Bluetooth stack and is being replaced by Mogul II sometime in 2008 w/more memory and fixed Bluetooth. Oh, and I still have to wait 3-5 business days for the new Mogul to arrive!
4) What can you do to fix my problem?



His Response:
1) Jerry called my cell phone in response to my voice mail, letting me know he was disturbed by my experience, and what was documented in my electronic record; had notified the area president of Sprint and had authorized on my account that should anyone speak with me, they were to give me anything I wanted. He happened to call while I was in my local Sprint store giving one last attempt at negotiation--one hour before my flight--and the note was on my account.

2) He sent this email the next day:
"Dear TOV,
Thank you for being a customer. I apologize for the problems that you experienced. I understand that you were able to get a phone yesterday after visiting our store again, so hopefully you this addresses your problem. We are in the process of making changes to several of our processes that you outline below [above in this post], which should improve the customer experience. Specifically, we are going to shorten the turnaround time for the waiting period which today is typically 2-3 days (not the 3-5 that the store communicated). Customers have told us that even 2-3 is too long, so we are creating alternatives that will allow 24 hour turnaround. We will also have a shipping flexibility capability in the March timeframe, which will allow us to ship wherever a customer wants.

Regards,
Jerry"

[I am not posting any follow-up conversations at this time].

Another note: Two days later news also came out that Sprint was no longer forcing people into new two-year contracts for every little change.


As Adam noted in Post #8, this is a good number (703-433-4401), and after looking at the site Consumerist.com, I wish I'd known of it sooner. Would have saved me a lot of time!
If you are having problems with Customer Service for Sprint and have legitimate concerns that other people DO get resolution with, I would recommend doing as I did: Just go to the executive officers of the company.

In closing, I am now the owner of a Sprint Mogul with 256MB onboard Flash (93.33MB used for the operating system), leaving 162MB for storage. I have everything I need installed and have 108.59MB free. It appears to run WM6. I also purchased a 4GB MicroSD.

-TOV
(Name: TOV (pronounced like "stove" no "so")

EDIT: