I am not a Sprint/Nextel cellular subscriber, but I came across this article which covers an announcement by Sprint/Nextel which started sending out termination of service letters to between 1,000 & 1,200 wireless subscribers at the end of June.
The reason they are dropping the subscribers, because they complained too much by calling customer service too often and making “outrageous demands”. Supposedly 40,000 customer service calls over a one month period (If the number were 1000 customers- that would be 40 calls to customer service per subscriber, or 1.33 calls per customer per day)
Sprint/Nextel would not say what the “outrageous demands” were or what percentage of these complaining calls were to their total customer service call volume. :dubious:
This move by Sprint/Nextel comes at the same time they are starting a new campaign to get more customers, but claim they have to cut down the customer base for better service
Like I said, I currently have no chips in this game*, but this is a shitty move by a company who is known by many to have horrible customer service. I have never met anyone who has or has had Sprint/Nextel as their service provider that was happy with the level of customer service or the amount of “technical difficulties” they always had with their phone/service.
I do however have experience dealing with S/N:
At my last job, my company cell phone was a Sprint/Nextel serviced phone. I had the worst time even getting a signal… in Las Vegas. No service at 90% of job sites (in town), no service at my house, and about 50% of the time no service at the office.
My best friend- working as a marketing director for 2 stores at the time, was always having horrible problems with here S/N service here. Every time she called S/N for help resolving her issue, their reply would always be the same bullshit… “try walking outside to make your call” “is your batter charged, that could lead to a weak signal”. They would considered it solved even when she said those things didn’t help. After all she was only paying $100/month for service from them on a 2 year contract. How dare she want to actually use a service she paid for and be able to do her job. When she would go to the store for help… maybe in person they would be able to solve the problems… no they were Oh you need to get this [newest phone on the market] That phone is really old. :dubious: Really, I got it 6 months ago… when it was one of the newest phones? They were less than helpful.
What? I said it was weak. Maybe this is my"RO" that I cant seem to be that outraged about, more like I am not surprised about it.
Since this is The Pit- Sprint/Nextel can go fuck themselves.
We tried switching to Sprint because my husband’s company offered a deal with them. He had started a new job in another city, and discovered he got no reception whatsoever inside our new house. So we canceled the service, and the Sprint people at the local office were very nice to him.
I was not so fortunate, however. I had also picked up a phone in the city we were moving from, and when we canceled the service was told by Sprint’s national customer service that I had two weeks to return everything to them. Fine; we had a tropical storm that caused a power outage for several days and a lot of neighborhood cleanup, and when I went into the local Sprint store to return my equipment, the asshole manager assured me that he did NOT have to follow the dictates of his national office and he wasn’t going to take my stuff back because it had been longer than three days! He was such a major asshole and so nasty and I got so frustrated that I ended up in tears – which my husband, who had arrived to help me move, walked into the store and saw. He ripped the guy a new one and he OH so grudgingly agreed to take the phone back.
That was the point that we both agreed that if Sprint is the last provider on the face of the earth, we will never return to them.
Some customers are toxic. Some call and complain simply in an effort to get free things. Maybe Sprint noticed this pattern from those 1200 - or maybe they just looked at number of calls and are dropping customers they failed to serve properly. I certainly don’t want to defend Sprint, but I also won’t prosecute them.
From the article:
Potential identity theft scam, maybe? Especially if done repeatedly.
Considering I can’t walk 10 feet without tripping over a cell phone outlet, unless one is in an area only served by Sprint, is this a problem?
They probably have over ten million subscribers and they dumped 1200 shitheads who were using way, way more than their share of the resources. That sounds like a fine business decision to me.
I am currently waiting for my contract with Sprint to end to get the hell outta there. Who do I have to piss to have them dump me and avoid paying the cancellation fee?
Call customer care twenty-five times a month for twelve to eighteen months in a row. Then they may put you on a list like this. This is the first time I’ve heard of it being done, so you may need to wait a while to get in the next purge.
The problem is, if they indeed keep screwing up, what is your other leverage? Calling costs money, repeat calls are often needed for companies with bad customer service. Who has terrible customer service? Cell phone companies.
Still, this being public only really will encourage people to call tons of times to get out of early cancellation fees.
Since I just signed up for a Sprint contract (and am now crossing my fingers based on the horror stories that are likely to come from this thread), I’m happy to hear that I might have to wait on hold a few minutes less because some jerk-off who used to tie up the customer service drone for hours at a time got kicked to the curb.
I also like this as a potential route to cancel my service if it ever gets really bad.
As someone who worked at a Sprint* call center at one point, I can tell you that, were I still there, I’d be jumping for joy at my desk.
As is, I still think it’s a pretty good move, but damn, I would’ve thought Sprint could have found a better way to phrase it.
There are customers, especially cell-service customers, who simply are not worth the fucking hassle. If someone is paying (for example) $75/month for their cell service – that’s what my wife pays on her Sprint plan – and costs you five times that in customer service calls, credits, extensions, refunds for ringtones or other services that they “never signed up for, honest!”, and a dozen other things… how is it anything but a smart decision to get rid of them?
Generally, a call center rep doesn’t mind getting a call about actual problems. And quite often, they’ll even try to help, if they can (I won’t say the majority of the time, but fairly often). But I imagine most of the people being dropped aren’t calling about actual problems, but instead, to mine for all the freebies they can. Fuck 'em. Part of my job when I was with that company was to make the call when a customer was no longer worth it. That, I have to say, was probably the most relieving, if not enjoyable, part of it all.
(* It was a different mobile carrier using Sprint’s network, but for all intents and purposes it was the same thing)
I stayed with Sprint for 3 months before finally giving up in disgust. Their billing was so screwed up that I finally canceled the service and dared them to bill me one more red cent.
My husband got a “deal” through his work to get 800 Nationwide minutes + wireless service for his Blackberry and laptop for around $150/month. I didn’t think that it sounded like a great deal, but hubby assured me it was. He also said they’d sweeten the pot by putting us on a family plan which would allow us to add 3 additional users for $10 each per month. And for signing up, we’d each receive top of the line phones and he’d get a free Blackberry.
The first bill arrived. Amount due: $600. I kid you not. I nearly fell out of my chair. I called my husband, he called the rep, and they credited $500. Turns out that they hadn’t credited him for the “free” Blackberry. The next month’s bill arrived. They charged my husband the expected $150 but then charged an additional $150 for my line, which was supposed to be $10. I had used less than 60 minutes, which was a charge of $2.50 per minute talked. Another phone call. Another credit. The third bill arrived and it was only $250 this time or almost $100 more than promised. That was it. I called them and told them to take back their damn phone.
My husband stuck with them, though, and we finally saw a bill for around 150/month. I still thought that was pretty high so I asked my husband to call them and see if they could put him on a plan with fewer Nationwide minutes as he only uses around 400 a month. The guy said that since he was being given a business discount, he would be foolish to lower the minutes since it would end up being about the same amount for fewer minutes, but my husband told him to do it anyway. At this point, he was going to do anything to appease me. I got the bill last week: 100 - or a savings of 33%. Hm, that doesn't sound like "about the same amount" to me.
I hope more companies drop toxic customers. Those people are costing me money in higher costs of doing business, which are passed onto me in the form of higher prices. There are plenty of people whose goal in life is to scam companies into giving them free shit - and we should all be happy when these con artists are told to take a hike.
(I can’t speak to Sprint’s customer service or the quality of their network. If you want to pit the quality of their network, go for it - but don’t pit them getting rid of the customers that are costing them - and by extension - you - money.)
I am a CSR and I get enormous satisfaction out of helping a customer who is genuinely confused, resolving a sticky problem, or giving a credit that is rightfully owed.
Having said that, some customers cost more money than they are worth. I am amazed that more businesses don’t just refuse service to those kinds of people - it might make them reconsider their behaviour.
I had sprint for a while and had few problems. I’ve been working retail for many years and I’ve seen my share of problem customers who thinking constant complaining will get them something, or every time they are slightly inconvenienced then they deserve some extra compensation. In the last few years I’ve seen a few customers who will create drama unnecessarily in order to have store policies waved in their favor.
“I know I bought it three months ago and the warranty says I have to send it back to the manufacturer but I bought it from you and I expect you to just replace it for me and deal with the manufacturer for me. After all I spent 49 whole dollars.”
More customers need to be politely but firmly told NO!! to break them of bad habits.
I finally got rid of them last month - my contract was up in January, but I was moving so figured I’d wait until I got to the new location, so I could switch to a local number.
They were fine when I first signed up w/Nextel, but then Sprint bought them and the service just wasn’t good. I’ve got no horror stories, but I just wasn’t happy.
Theoretically, many places are supposed to be rethinking the whole “the customer is always right” theory, which I think is a great idea. Based on my years of customer service, my theory is that “98% of the customers are normal people who might need help understanding an ad or finding an item; 2% of the customers are jackoffs who are trying to get something for nothing”. I have no problem giving the jackoffs nothing, as their general technique for interaction consists of nothin’ but yelling as soon as their bullshit is discovered, whether it be returning free after rebate items w/o a reciept, bad checks, stealing, or anything else. Fuck 'em.
I appreciate that Sprint’s customer service may suck, but I can appreciate a company not wanting to do business with some customers.
May wife managed a customer service group for two years and they gave customers scores, and below a certain score, tried (in soft ways) to get rid of them. The thing is, some customers were simply too fucking hard to deal with. Some cost the company far more than they paid it, and why should you be expected to want to do business with someone who wants more stuff than they’re paying for? And some customers were crazy and/or abusive, and you definitely should not put up with them.
Given the number of customers Sprint has, 1000 customers is a pretty tiny fraction. I’m betting they could easily find 1000 customers who are toxic and evil and call two times a day and verbally abuse people, and if they want to cut those jerks off, good for them.
I also am a csr, for a satellite tv company, and I love working with and helping most customers. There are a certain percent of customers however who do nothing but complain, want credits and free services. These are invariably people who are always late with their payments. Every call from these people are a drain on the profits and added cost to other customers.
Next time you are on hold waiting to be helped by customer service wish your company would do the same.
My sister-in-law, at the last chain women’s clothing store she was a manager for, wrote a “Dear Jane (Customer):” letter to her worst offender. This particular woman would buy thousands of dollars worth of clothing, some in person and some through the catalog service, every couple of weeks. Because she was a “good customer” she would sometimes show up right before closing time and shop at least an hour past closing, and they weren’t allowed to kick anyone out or otherwise put pressure on. Then every few weeks she’d return much of what she bought (even the catalog-purchased items) at the store, totally messing up the store’s numbers. She said a lot of the items had never been worn - for instance many of the items bought online were still in sealed plastic. Finally she was able to write a letter which stated something like ‘obviously we are unable to meet your standards’ and went on to state that their business relationship was being terminated. In other words, banned from shopping in the stores or via catalog/online.
Haven’t had to deal much with Sprint customer service so I can’t add much to that side. I will say that I won’t go into the store without taking a book and planning to spend at least an hour waiting.
But from my time in CSR, I’ve had users moan and complain about inconsequential and imaginary problems. Some of them even went so far as to admit they were trying to get an upgrade or something for nothing. Justifying it with “The squeeky wheel gets the grease.”
My standard response was that it’s also the first one to be replaced.
Sounds like Sprint is replacing some wheels. I wish more companies would get on that bandwagon.
