I am amazed at the consistently bad customer service I get with Sprint PCS!! I’m just infuriated!
I added wireless text messaging to the phone my sister’s using since she moved in with us. It cost $10 a month for 500 text messages. It took several visits to the Sprint website and three e-mails (which I kept) from a cust disservice rep from Sprint to get it set up.
So the next bill comes, and I have $79 in additional usage charges. WTF? Turns out they were for the text messaging. I contacted Sprint this morning about it, and it turns out that the $10 additional I’m paying per month for text messaging is only so I can RECEIVE them, not send them. I have to pay an additional $5 per month to send them, plus that time comes out of my minutes.
While that may not be unreasonable, I do think it is unreasonable of them to never once mention to me, during all the discussions and e-mails about the text messaging problem, that adding text messaging meant only receiving them, not sending them.
When I was told this in an e-mail today, I expressed this to them and asked them to go ahead and add the wireless web option so we can send text messages. Their reponse? “It’s been added effective February 26th. Thanks, and have a great day!”
This is why we have phone number portability. Once your contract is up, sayonara! AT&T decided to fuck me over on roaming charges, racking me up for over $100 when my phone clearly displayed “HOME” instead of “ROAM”. They told me my coverage was defined by my coverage map, not the display on the phone. :mad:
Contract was up January 15th, I signed up with Verizon a couple of days later, kept my number.
I just got another e-mail from them. In response to my request for a refund of the additional usage charges, they have removed wireless text messaging from my line and refunded the $17.76 they have charged for it. ?? Again I ask, WTF?
Will this ever get straightened out? What’s ridiculous is that I’ve been with Sprint since spring of 2001, and up until the last few months have had no problems with them. And they’ve had no problems with me, either, I should probably add.
So is it worth paying the outrageous cancelation fees to be done with them?
Having pitted Sprint and having ranted and raved for the last two hours about this whole mess, I feel obligated to come back here to report that they did finally take care of everything. They credited the $75 back to my account; put the wireless options on the line I needed it on; and everything appears to be working.
Now I just have to wait until the next bill comes to make sure. Good thing I save all these e-mails!
As a longstanding unhappy (and soon to be former) Sprint PCS customer, I’ve found that if you need to get some problem with Sprint resolved, call up Cust. Service but once you get a person on the phone ask them to transfer you to Customer Retention. Customer Retention is staffed by the type of people that you’d think should be answering calls in Customer Service.
For anyone who is interested, Sprint has recently come under some new management(new CEO to be precise and a new president over the PCS operations) and one of their biggest pushes is to improve the customer satisfaction with their PCS Customer Service(JD Power’s recent survey of customer service quality ranked Sprint 4th out of 5 in this area). They have implemented all kinds of initiatives to make it easier for a customer to get good quality service. If a Sprint employee comes across a complaint like the ones here, even if they aren’t normally customer-facing employees, they are supposed to take ownership of that customers complaint and be an advocate for it until it is resolved. Sprint has approximately 65,000 employees, probably less than 10% of those work directly with customers(in customer service positions) on a daily basis. This initiative has added customer satisfaction and ownership of individual customer complaints to the job description of every single employee, effectively meaning that if 10% do it full time(6,500 full-time customer service people) then they’ve just multiplied their customer service numbers by nine by adding 58,500 part-time customer service people who may see issues like the ones in this thread and contact the individuals to help them.
Some internal systems are supposed to be set up soon to facilitate resolution of issues brought up by employees. Obviously Customer Service is still your first resort, but if you know someone who works for Sprint or have a friend of a friend, or whatever, then that person, according to the CEO, is supposed to be capable of taking care of your issue and acting as an advocate for resolution of the issue. This process is slower than calling Customer Service, and it isn’t as streamlined, but it gets you into the “talk to a real person about the problem” mode faster because instead of ~6,500 people who can take your complaint and start some sort of action on it there are now ~65,000.
In the long run we’ll see if it works or not. A co-worker of mine recently spent a fair amount of time trying to resolve a complaint from a woman who called him up bitching about a tower in her area which was located near a park and she was afraid the signals would harm the children. She was demanding the tower be moved to another area and that we start using satellites instead(talk about a lack of understanding of physics!). I think he went above and beyond in trying to help her, but ultimately she was unhelpable.
For the record, I have had Sprint PCS since the year 2000 and I have been very happy with them. My phone broke, they gave me a new one. They call me if I forget to pay my bill before they shut it off. I have had one bad experience with a Sprint PCS customer service representative, but one bad experience in 4 years is pretty good in my opinion.
Keep mulling World Eater, in my experience Sprint works pretty hard to keep up with the times, and has been very reliable for me personally.
Sprint still makes you use the wireless web to send text messages? Damn.
I had all kinds of billing problems when I had Sprint PCS a few years ago. Verizon Wireless has been great… their coverage is excellent (and Sprint is one of their preferred roaming partners for America’s Choice plans, if you happen to find a place where SPCS has coverage and VZW doesn’t), you can send text messages right from your phone, and you can get unlimited text messaging for $4.99 a month.
However, VZW’s base prices are higher than other carriers, and since they’re doing so well, they won’t be nearly as desperate as Sprint to keep you as a customer. Sprint’s retention people will give you head if you threaten to cancel your service; Verizon won’t negotiate at all.
sprint’s customer service never came into play ion our decision. it was the lack of coverage in our area. we almost needed to be standing under a sprint tower to get signal enough to receive our calls. once in a sprint phone store i had no signal.
so far, verizon’s customer service leaves alot to be desired, but when a customer calls me, my phone rings and i can answer it.
One time, I was in the Baltimore airport and my flight was cancelled. The airline instructed us to call their reservation line with the nearby phone bank, which turned out to be a cart full of Sprint PCS phones. Someone must not have been thinking when they installed that “phone bank”, because none of us could stay connected for more than 30 seconds, if we could place a call at all!
Oddly enough, I’ve never really had a problem with Sprint. I live in a major metropolitan area and have never wanted for coverage at home or on travel, so long as I’m within ten miles or so of a major Interstate. But I learned that the hard way.
I’m not the smartest guy. For example, if you’re going to blast along the Blue Ridge Parkway in December, you should know that there are parts of the road which never see direct sunlight, and even on the nicest of days those parts of the road will remain frozen.
Armed with that lack of knowledge, I recently found myself in a Mazda Miata, spun out and alone on a 300-yard expanse of ice on the good side of a 300 foot dropoff. That phone was as useful as a tick at a dog show.
What was far more reliable were the inevitable camo-clad hunters in an F-150 with a chain who happened by within an hour and happily dragged my car to dry pavement.
The lesson: gun-toting pickup truck drivers are also far less likely to make you squeal like a pig than than cellular phone service providers are.
But, see, that’s because you didn’t buy Sprint’s optional roadside service plan. (Which, seriously, they used to have. I’m not sure if they still do or not.)
I’ve used Sprint PCS at either work or home since 1998 and haven’t had any problems with them. And since both of my employers during this time period had business agreements with Sprint, I get a healthy discount. In fact, auntie em just ordered a new Sprint plan and phone yesterday, so hopefully she won’t have any of the horrid customer service problems others have.
Glad everything worked out for you. I am another satisfied Sprint customer and recommend the “Retention Department” request if you think your current plan isn’t satisfactory. You may want to also consider to upgrade to a Vision phone. You get unlimited web access and test messaging without using minutes. I pay on $10 a month for the Vision service.
Also if you have been a customer since 2001 you should not still be under contract with Sprint unless you “re-uped” with a new plan. Once you satisfy you contract obligation (1 or 2 years) you can leave without penalty. If you decide to stay with Sprint you do not need to do anything. You will continue to have the plan ($ and mins) as agreed upon when you signed up. Unless of course they notify you of changes.
I don’t recall if I agreed to any contract period when I accepted the offer from the Retention Dept. I don’t think I did though.
Count me in as another satisfied Sprint PCS Customer. And I have been since 1998. Yeah, my phone doesn’t work in the middle of nowhere, but I have no desire to go to the sticks, so that works out good for me.
I have added phones, changed plans and other such things, and I have never had a billing issue.
<slight hijack>
And what is with text messaging? I don’t know anyone that uses this. Seems really worthless to me. Typing on a cell phone takes forever. And I am already using my cell phone; why not just call the person, especially if text messaging uses your minutes?!?!?!? If they don’t answer, you can leave a voicemail. Seems extremely dumb to me. Save your 10 bucks.
Who knows? I hang out at “techie” message board and all the Europeans there always squawk about how they can send anyone in Europe a text message for free… To which us Americans say, yes but we can call anyone in the US for “free” (well, included in our minutes anyway). To which they always respond, “but it’s a TEXT MESSAGE!!” To whoch we say “who cares?” and teh argument continues…
I don’t get it. Yes, in the amount of time it takes to type out a text message (even with T9), I can usually call someone at work, home or their mobile and get in touch with them. Maybe it’s a European thing?!? Maybe someone in the UK can text someone in Italy for free but it costs $$$$ call them? Maybe the Europeans have forgotten the size of the US vs. Europe again?
Text messaging is a great feature, especially for those of us who are used to AIM and ICQ.
You don’t have to worry about whether the person is available to talk right now. He’ll get your message and he can reply at his leisure. If his phone is off, the system will save your message, and he’ll get it as soon as he turns his phone on.
You can use it in places where it’s too quiet or too loud to talk on the phone - at a library, movie theater, concert, or board meeting.
You can use it even if you don’t have a phone, as long as you have a computer; the system will translate emails to text messages, and vice versa. You can have eBay send a message to your phone when someone outbids you, when an auction finishes, etc.
It can be cheaper than calling. Sprint PCS is apparently doing their best to make it expensive and inconvenient, but for example with VZW, you can send a message for about $0.10 and receive for about $0.02, without any special plan.
In those instances, I simply turn the ringer completely off and let the call roll to… voicemail. If I’m somewhere where I might want
eed a call but don’t want to be a nuisance, I use vibrate mode. If I wanna take the call, I simply leave the room, if not I can press any button (other than talk) and the vibrating stops and the call rolls over to voicemail.
I don’t know anyone that I speak with on a regular basis that doesn’t have a cellphone. I suppose that if I didn’t have ANY phone handy, I could email\SMS them, but to be honest, this situation has never come up. However, see below for more on RECEIVING SMS messages.
I guess this depends on your plan. I have 1000 minutes and unlimited nights and weekends starting at 8pm to any phone number in the US and have never come close to going over my minutes. However, in my part of the world (Charlotte, NC), the Next Big Thing is “unlimited calling”. For example, Cricket offers a $29.99 unlimited local calling plan. This actually a great deal for me, as I rarely call LD on my cell but I don’t wanna deal with the hassle of switching just now. So that kind of screws your last point, but again, this depends on the plan.
Now - I never said anything about RECEIVING text messages. Getting SMSs from eBay or MSN is a great idea. I personally get an SMS message on my cell phone whenever someone leaves a voicemail on my home phone. But I’d hate to have to reply to them.
(Which, seriously, they used to have. I’m not sure if they still do or not.)