Sprint Drops Customers Over Excessive Inquiries 386
theodp writes "The WSJ confirms earlier reports that Sprint Nextel is terminating the contracts of subscribers who call customer service too much (registration required). The 1,000 or so terminated subscribers called an average of 25 times a month — 40x times higher than average — according to a company spokeswoman, who also noted that a large number of calls from these customers were related to billing issues."
wow (Score:5, Insightful)
wait... am i first to post! hell yes sppp
Honestly (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What rights exactly do consumers have? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What rights exactly do consumers have? (Score:4, Insightful)
and in other news... (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm shocked.
Charge 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What rights exactly do consumers have? (Score:1, Insightful)
OK, here's a free clue for ya'... you don't have to buy anything you don't want to.
Now hold on to your pants here. Are you sitting down? You sure? This one will wow ya'... You don't HAVE to even have a cell phone!
Ohh, I know. That will take you a few minutes to wrap your head around. But it's true. You don't actually have to purchase a cell phone, a cell phone contract, or even those stupid Star Trek things that people wear on, around, and in their ears. You can choose to purchase nothing if you want!
I've heard that there is a group of Pacific Islanders ( I don't remember which one... there are so many) that have actually survived for many thousands of years with no telephone service at all. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. I thought the same thing too. It's gotta be fake, like an article from The Onion.
But actually, it's real. I shit you not. There are people who have lived and continue to live without a telephone of any kind. You should look it up... maybe you can learn what their secret trick is to surviving without a telephone.
Now, I don't know if they're capitalists or socialists or communists, or Mormons, (I think they were cannibalistic scientologists living in a semi-rigid authoritarian commune... I can't remember exactly) but I do know that it's possible. So if they can do it, surely you can, too.
So, good luck, and farewell in your quest to not purchase a cell phone.
Re:What rights exactly do consumers have? (Score:5, Insightful)
Get real, if you want a job and a place to live you need a phone. The companies you get regular phone service through are the same companies you get cell service from. And internet companies are either the same again or have the same levels of "service."
So all in all, not so much choice.
Re:What a joke... (Score:3, Insightful)
Come to think of it...
What is wrong with calling if it is justified? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you suggesting that, if they were being overcharged or billed incorrectly, they shouldn't take the issue up? If they made a reasonable query about their bill and were fobbed-off or ignored I would also be calling until I got satisfaction.
Re:Cost Of Tethered Hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
The iPhone is the only phone that I am aware of where there has been absolutely no discounting, and Real Money has to be paid. Of course, on the other side of the coin, Apple fans are the only people I know of who would pay $600 for a phone that has been way over-hyped and actually has very little revolutionary about it, instead of just using the free or discounted phones from their carrier.
Re:What is wrong with calling if it is justified? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is wrong with calling if it is justified? (Score:2, Insightful)
As someone who has worked in a high-price/low-margin retail company (service, computers) for at least a year, I can tell you right now; some people are simply unimaginably incomprehensibly unreasonable.
We've had customers try and argue with us and negotiate price with us when we had FIXED RATE pricing. We've had cases where customers threaten to sue before they even tell us they even had a problem. There are such things as bad customers, customers who intentionally waste time and cause aggravation to get what they want.
ANY (residential) customer who makes over 25 calls on average, per month, for more than one month is either a bad customer or chemically imbalanced. Notice, that's about 1 call PER DAY for and likely about THE SAME ISSUE (probably billing).
If you're having an issue with your phone company that requires you to call once a day about, you don't need a contract with them, you either need a lawyer, or a therapist.
Re:What rights exactly do consumers have? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What rights exactly do consumers have? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Honestly (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What is wrong with calling if it is justified? (Score:5, Insightful)
And if it didn't get resolved any time soon? Would you have just sucked up the $4000 charges? I mean, anyone who calls Customer Service a lot is just being difficult, right?
Re:What is wrong with calling if it is justified? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What a joke... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
You assume they have valid billing issues. Some people dispute stuff just because they don't want to pay it.
And when a customer service rep refuses, guess what they do. Yup, they call over and over again hoping to reach someone who will do what they want.
Re:What rights exactly do consumers have? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Actually, unregulated industries tend to have better customer service... phone service and telecom is HIGHLY regulated..."
Leaving aside the issue of whether unregulated industries tend to have better customer service (a statement for which I can find a number of counterexamples, particularly the horrifically overregulated airline industry in the Seventies, when airfares were grotesquely expensive but there was quite a bit of sucking up to the customer, nearly all flights were pretty much direct, and the entire continent's air transport didn't shut down because of a thunderstorm over Boston) the claim that phone service and telecommunications companies in America are highly regulated is...well, highly regulated when compared to what, exactly? England, where consumers have to pay a tax to watch a TV? Japan, where the telephone company won't install your phone without proof that you've got your telephone license?
Plus, you can very easily make the counterargument, that regulatory requirements on the telecommunications industry have forced better customer service. For example, for years cell phone companies treated people badly and if you needed to keep your phone number, you were screwed, because you couldn't move that number to another carrier. After years of bullying by regulators, during which the carriers insisted that it was too technologically challenging, and would triple the costs of cell phone access (really, Verizon actually used to say that) number portability was enacted. Now, you can say that the the providers still treat you badly (though I would say that things are in fact better now than they were five years ago, since it's easier to walk away) but at least you can take your business elsewhere.
My point is that regulation is neither "good" nor "bad." Because there can be regulations that are either good or bad. Simple slogans about the miraculous properties of the free market or the intrinsic stupidity of government bureaucrats don't really answer any of my questions.
Re:Customer Service (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is wrong with calling if it is justified? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, people should just stop calling and pay their erroneous bills. What's an extra couple hundred dollars in bullshit charges in the long run, eh?
If you're having an issue with your phone company that requires you to call once a day about, you don't need a contract with them, you either need a lawyer,
Good luck with that... oh.. what? Mandatory arbitration clause? Motion to dismiss because of that?
Have fun dealing with the "arbitrators" who were chosen by the company you're filing a complaint against.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Customer Service (Score:4, Insightful)
Except with Sprint, they don't.
You get transfered from one fuckwit to another. Over and over and over again. Agents lie to you repeatedly, giving false contact information, forgetting about promised callbacks the moment the line goes dead, "losing" records of previous calls and promised changes. You call back again, hoping that you'll get them to fix their mistake, but instead get kicked in the balls over and over again by yet another agent hates their job and knows there is no such thing as accountability at Sprint.
As for Customer Service, it's the same with all of the carriers. You are never going to get consistently good customer service anymore. The call centers in America have a horrendous turnover rate which impacts service greatly.
It also helps that all the carriers have nearly identical abusive contracts and policies that ensure that if you want to leave, you're stuck with a several hundred dollar cancellation fee and a (probably) a phone intentionally crippled to only work with a certain company's network.
Once your customers are all so afraid of canceling early due to an ETF and you know the "competition" doesn't really provide anything better than what you have, is there a reason you have to care about what your customer service?
Americans migrate from one carrier to another like mindless sheep, hoping that one cell phone carrier will be better than the last, but once they get their first bill, they realize that their new cell company is just as dishonest, unethical and scummy as the last bunch of fuckers.
What we need (Score:2, Insightful)
The only fix is when one company stands out and provides excellent service. So many people will start moving that other companies will need to bump their level of service to compete. Until this happens everything will remain the same.
In the end they are doing the right thing as far as their shareholders are concerned. Having shitty support service but making really "cool" phones is all they need to do to get our money.
Re:What is wrong with calling if it is justified? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:*subscription* required (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Let me tell you a story (Score:2, Insightful)
Frankly, if it took that long, I'd consider hiring a lawyer just to call the fucking telco. If they don't fix my problems when my lawyer calls, he will have a very good record of when calls were made, etc., and I can charge/sue/small claims them for my charges, to have my credit rating fixed, and for my lawyer fees.
Actually, if I were a lawyer, I'd seriously consider offering that as a service...
- RG>
Most of you complaining about incompetent techs (Score:4, Insightful)
But, believe it or not (and most of you won't because I'm going to describe YOU in a sec), but the majority of customer issues are caused by the customer.
Case in point:
The very last customer I've ever spoken to (this is why I remember it) had been pushed around by tech support for over a month (at least this is what the customer and the acct showed). So I figured, let me go out of my way for this guy. Forget corporate policy and hit him up with his internet. I asked him to read me the CMAC off of the modem.
"00:15:a3:45:3b:2e", He replied. That mac is just pulled outta thin air for story telling purposes."ok, is this 123 I'm a moron lane?" I ask
"yes it is" he replies.
ok I gave you a bootfile for internet, reset your modem and try again" I say
"Nope nothing, you people all have your heads up your asses, get me a manager now!"
"No, sir until I get your internet up I'm not going to transfer you at all"
Over 45 min later, and 200+ insults thrown at my intelligence, I find the problem. This jackass, who for the past 45 minutes has been insulting my intelligence, and has done the same to countless other reps, had told me his CMAC address was 00:15:a3:45:3b:2e when in reality it was 00:15:a3:45:38:2e. Theres one problem right there...we've been giving your internet to someone else. Not only that, but this moron who said he lived at 123 I'm a moron lane, failed to mention at all that it was a duplex and so 123 I'm a moron lane apt A was listed as just 123 I'm a moron lane, while apt b (where he lived) was 123b I'm a moron lane.I see this type of stuff happen all the time. You can't get online and you have a router? The issues most likely with your router because your modem is online. Customers hear that and right away think...buy a new router. Then they get made when they get home and still can't get online, call back in, and hear the same reason. Then they get ignorant with the support they're getting when they're the moron that buys crap they don't know how to work. They went out and spent 80+ bucks for a router, when, had they known how to work they're equipment, they would just have reset it.
Long story short is: If you don't know how to work your own equipment..........don't blame tech support. Also, don't curl your lips to yell at billing for the $400 cell phone bill you got last month when you have it in the Analog Roaming Mode (do cells even have this anymore? I haven't had a cell in about 8 years)....thats your dumbass fault.
I have always been of the mind that companies like Dell or IBM, or e-machines, or hell linux and microsoft, should ALL have mandatory certification programs if you intend to use thier product. And if you dont have this certificate you CANNOT call in to complain about anything but the color of the sky.As somebody who worked at Sprint... (Score:2, Insightful)
Watch Your Stocks There's A Sprint Crook Somewhere (Score:1, Insightful)
MCI CSRs, supervisors and even supervisors' supervisors would hang up on him or his staff when they tried to call on behalf of a consumer. Not one problem ever got resolved, not even with the threat of having the company's name blasted over the airwaves of a syndicated radio show.
It wasn't long after that the financial scandals about MCI broke wide open. I wonder if the same thing is about to happen with Sprint. Some fat cat exec probably has a bank account in the Bahamas right now, and the word being fed down the line to the idiots in customer service is 'fuck the consumer.' When someone in charge is stealing billions of dollars, he doesn't give a damn about the customers, and that attitude is easily conveyed to the rank and file, although they don't know the reasoning behind this change in company attitude towards the customers...
Should we be Surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Most of you complaining about incompetent techs (Score:3, Insightful)
I did my time in tech support hell, so I feel your pain. Really. I've been there. But I've seen far too many techs who confuse "customer knows nothing" and "customer knows way more than I do but I can't admit it". If I have a serial connection to my DSL modem and I can verify that it's not getting out, I'm not going to reboot my computer to see if that fixes it. In those situations, the tech's probably cursing at me for "not knowing how to work my own equipment", but I still reserve the right to blame them.
Interesting choice of example! I had the "super-premium unlimited roaming of kind on any network and unlimited minutes for $bignum per month" plan for a while. When I went on vacation and came home to a $300 phone bill, you can bet your butt that I had a curly lip.
Re:Most of you complaining about incompetent techs (Score:3, Insightful)
Fine, just keep your idiot sales department off the public's back first of all. I think that's where a lot of the problem lies. People are being sold something by *your company* that they shouldn't be signing up to... I'll sign your certificate of competence just as soon as you can prove your sales department isn't bending the truth and show me their certificate of competence too.
The number of times I've helped out non technical friends because a sales person has told them "oh it's really easy, you just plug it in and follow the simple one side of instructions" - then my friends can't do it because *they've been lied to*. They end up with some techie on the support line who 9 times out of ten thinks they are superior and treats them like shite, one time out of ten they get lucky and get a nice guy like you who tries to help out and maybe even has the guts to tell them they've been mis-sold a product... and I end up having to try and help a friend who's been sold something not appropriate for their needs or their abilities because a sales rep has blinded them with a flashy presentation in order to get their commission.
The sales depts in companies have a lot to answer to as well.
Re:Most of you complaining about incompetent techs (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing the miserable company you worked for never missed billing a customer for a dime, did they? When it comes to billing, you'll cross reference credit report address databases and employ all the cleverness one can wring out of an MBA to figure out exactly how to never miss a receivable. But when it comes to doing your job with a deliverable, you just can't figure out how to do it without the customer reading the bloody hardware ID of the router? That's chicken shit, and the fact that you don't know it and write a rant about "this stupid customer" is very telling. In the old days you would've sent somebody out there fix his problem instead of relying on him to do your field work for you.
Quit your job, please (Score:3, Insightful)
So in conclusion, quit, and do something where you're not in contact with people as much, since you obviously can't deal with them in any professional manner. Fuck you and your "mandatory certificate"; if you sell a product that doesn't work, and the customer has paid for a warranty, the company better damn well fix it regardless of skill level.
Reading hex numbers is not that easy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's a little story that comes to mind. Some 5 years ago, a bunch of pranksters here in Slashdot registered accounts with names such as "Hëmos," "Hêmos," "CmdrTáco" and so on, and started posting comments to stories. A prodigious amount of people fell for, thinking it really was CmdrTaco and Hemos.
How could this happen, when it was supposedly plainly visible that these were different account names? Because if the only language you read is English, which doesn't use diacritical marks on letters, if you are a fluent reader you will tune out such marks if they are placed there. If the comment author field says "CmdrTäco," you won't wont even notice the umlaut over the "a," because it doesn't serve to discriminate between multiple possible written English words.
Now, apply this to "8" vs. "B." Unless the customer changes their whole set of ingrained, unconscious expectations about what can count as a "number" or a "digit," you must expect a high error rate in having them read a hexadecimal number to you, period. This is not because of "stupidity," as you'd have it, but rather, because of intelligence run amok in an unfamiliar setting. The customer is following their usual methods for tuning out irrelevant detail when reading a number, but this usual method misfires when dealing with hex.
And I've not gone into problems when the hex number is printed in small type.
Solutions: (a) train your phone reps to always double check whether an "8" don't use hex numbers at all; (b) try not to rely on identifying customers using coding schemes that will be unfamiliar to customers, like hex numbers.