[Updated] Why Should I Stay with Sprint PCS after they hose me for $300?

[edufur]

When they said "Try your luck at AT&T," sadly they had a good point. They all suck. I started with AT&T - had bad customer service, switched to sprint... bad customer service, switched to verizon... and it was even worse. Verizon will actually try to get out of their own service agreements with you. Of all, Verizon is the worst and sprint is the best of crap. But... here is what I have to say about warranties... NEVER NEVER get them. This is the exact reason not to. They sell you and promise you the moon but then they send notices out to tell you how the policy has changed and that you can opt out. Well... if you don't opt out, you continue paying (and accepting the new terms). Just NEVER get it. Instead, throw the $5 per month into a coffee tin and then when your phone breaks, buy a new one out of pocket. Sorry man, it isnt gonna be better anywhere else.

[Jeff_Birt]

My experience with Sprint - if, and that's a big IF, you can get your plan set up right.... and you never touch it, and they don't migrate you to a new billing system, OR you catch billing errors right away (look for a billing error any, er, EVERY time you touch your account!) then they're fine. Basically, if you can get it right two months in a row, you're good to go until the next screwup.

I about fell off my chair laughing when reading this. It perfectly sums up my experience with both Sprint and Embarq(Sprints Local service branch). I've had to argue with Sprint for a year before they could get my home phone billing correct when they later talked me into their 'combined' plan it took another year to fix it.

After they created the Embarq brand to sell local service under they started offering cellular service (Sprint labeled as Embarq), so the wife and I got new phones through them. What a nightmare! My wife got a simple LG unit and I got the PPC-6700. First they switched the phone numbers when transferring service, so I had to go 2-3 days giving everyone three different numbers to try and call to get me, before they got it fixed.

Then after a week of talking to every idiot that works in Sprint tech support (I don't think they are all idiots, just most I have talked too) about why I could not get a data connection, I finally got in touch with a very nice and helpful lady. Who spent about 2 hours on the phone with me only to find out that they had burned the wrong firmware to the phone. As I was leaving town for the week on business they said they would ship the replacement phone to my hotel room and that it would arrive Monday when I got to the hotel, yeah right.

So, the replacement arrives the next Friday, and everything seems to work OK. I got the next bill and about fell over. They not only charged me for the replacement phone, but they were nice enough to charge me full price! It took close to 2.5 months to get the second phone off the bill, meanwhile the keyboard started falling apart (within two weeks, and I did notify them). I refused to go through another round of replacement until they got the first billing error fixed. After the billing error was fixed I called back and asked about getting a replacement. The two 'ladies' I talked to were horrible, absolutely the worst customer service I have ever had. They tried to refuse to do anything and then the 'supervisor' tried extortion tactics, saying she would only issue a replacement if I agreed to buy insurance. As the issue had nothing to do with having or not having insurance, and they were notified when this second phone failed (these two ladies had the information from when I had called before), I flatly refused to have to pay them even more money for an item that had never worked right from the get-go.

So, many more hours spent on the phone, complaints filed with the BBB, I had to lean on a really nice lady who works for Embarq locally (who was great to deal with, she really tried to help even though it was not her job), to get another phone sent. The third PPC-6700 worked right out of the box, it took another 3-4 months before they quit screwing up the bill. (If you can think of a possible way to screw up a bill they did it.)

What really gets me is that this type of nonsense has to cost them a bundle. The billing errors simply should not happen, it costs the company too much money. Not to mention it drives customers away. But perhaps I was being too demanding by expecting to have both a working phone and a correct bill?

[winmobilelawyer]

Wow, I guess I'm with a different Sprint than you guys. I have never had these problems that you guys do. The only problem I have ever had was when my father gave me his ppc6700 a couple years ago, we forgot to make sure that the insurance switched to my phone number. After the first bill came and he had insurance and i didnt, we just called and bam, siwtched it over.

Other than that, I replaced my samsung A900 once, new one in store 5 min, and I get great service and unbeatable pricing. Not to mention about 2 out of 5 times I call and complain about something i get somesort of $50 credit to my account.

Maybe if you guys were nicer to customer service, they would be nicer to you?

[schettj]

Originally Posted by winmobilelawyer

Maybe if you guys were nicer to customer service, they would be nicer to you?

Yes, begging for good service is the key with Sprint, for sure. Mark of a successful company - "The customer is always wrong, unless they're very sweet to me"

I don't doubt that sprint can, sometimes, get something right. I've just not experienced it. Ever. Still, they are the cheapest game in town.

[psiphi]

Whenever I have dealt face to face with people from Sprint, all was good... On the phone with customer support, only about 1 in 3 times do things get handled in a professional manner (meaning it always seems to take 3 calls to solve a problem...) I remember when my Sprint Spectrum account transfered to Sprint PCS, and it took weeks to have the money payed on the last Spectum bill credited to my account, because they moved me over in the middle of a billing cycle... (Yes, I've been with Sprint that long and longer...)

[luv2chill]

Put me in the "never really had any (unreasonable) problems with Sprint" camp. However, we have a fairly large (70+ lines) corporate account and a different set of customer service reps so that could definitely be a factor. I am very polite on the phone, however (no matter what company I'm dealing with). The very few times I've "lost it" when speaking with a company on the phone did not end up getting me anywhere.

[schettj]

Sure, it's easy to stay come when you've got all those chill pills

[runt]

lately, sprint has been "cramming" me with multiple unlimited sms charges. last one they said was because i removed vision on the line and they had to switch the $5 text plan to a $8 one, funny thing is both were $8 chrages............

[Jeff_Birt]

Maybe if you guys were nicer to customer service, they would be nicer to you?

That's the thing, I'm always nice. I've spent the majority of my adult life doing field service, dealing with a wide variety of folks both in person and over the phone. I have never lost my temper until this incident. When you have to call then 25-30 times to get a situation taken care of it gets REALLY old. I mean seriously, they were running out of ways to screw things up.

I'm not even hard to please, just give me a phone that works and a proper bill. Knock on wood, it has all been working fine for the last year.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think they are evil; I have friends that work for Sprint. I do believe that the #1 goal of their customer support is to get you off the phone; each CSR must handle X calls per day. When you have a problem, nobody owns it. That is, it is no ones responsibility to ensure that it does indeed get resolved. They just punch some buttons on the computer and get you off the phone. Call back the next time and you get someone new and have to start all over again.

[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: