Saturday, July 7, 2007

Sprint To Customer: We Can Get Into Some Gangsta Ish



I've been a Sprint customer for nearly 10 years. If I had to describe my relationship with them, I would say Sprint is like that boyfriend that does a few sweet things to keep you, but just not enough for you to actually consider him a good boyfriend.

So this absolutely doesn't surprise me. Let me throw a scenario at you: Say Sprint is your company. Say your customers begin to complain that you have woefully, shitty customer service. What do you do?:

A) Revamp customer service so that it's more beneficial for your customer

B) Re-route your customer service through Indonesia so that if people do complain about it, you'll never find out about it.

C) Tell the customer to f**k off

Most of us would probably choose A because we're decent Americans who posess a heart and a modicum of responsibility. Sprint, my friends, chose C.

For years, Sprint has been lambasted for its customer service, which I admit is rough around the edges. Their customers have complained about the long wait times with customer service. Me, I NEVER call Sprint during normal business hours because I don't have two hours of my life to waste on the phone with them. I'll call at midnight or later. (And as a side note: If you ever want to amuse yourself, drunk dial Sprint. You actually don't mind their terrible customer service then.)

Anyway, instead of correcting their shitty-ass customer service, Sprint has decided to drop customers who irritate them. No, I didn't make that up. They are cancelling the accounts of customers who call them too much.

Read that again: THEY ARE CANCELLING THE ACCOUNTS OF PEOPLE WHO CALL THEM TOO MUCH.

Ain't dat 'bout a bitch?

Until this, I thought no company could be more terrible than Northwest Airlines, who has traumatized me on several different occasions because they fail to treat their customers like dignified human beings.

But it takes some real nerve to tell your customers that if you call us one mo' gin, you can kiss those 1,000 minutes a month goodbye. I mean, what kind of shit is that? How exactly will Sprint define "calling too much?" Am I allowed three calls a week? Two calls a month? If my phone starts acting up or I notice a discrepency on my bill, then I guess I just better STFU because Sprint might cancel my account. And considering Sprint's customer service people treat you like indentured servants, my guess is that they won't have much tact in terminating your account. I could see the kiss-off call going something like this:

Customer: Hello?

Sprint: Hey, bitch. Don't call us no more.

Click.

As Will Smith said in Bad Boys 2, "that's that bullshit." Whatever happened to the "customer is always right" mantra? Whatever happened to taking some responsibility when you're company is messing up?

This took some real balls. Sprint to Customer: We can handle this like gentlemen, or we can get into some gangsta shit.

4 comments:

Southerner in Suomi said...

Just wow. I've had cingular for 6 yrs now and nothing this bad.

It was a little rough when they merged, but everybody got credits, not a STFU message or letter.

WoW!!!

Jameil said...

horrrrrrrrrendous. glad i got out b/c i WILL call u if you mess up!!! & i had to call them like once a month. that's not cute.

Anonymous said...

Don't know if it's because I'm Muslim and they're scared I might pull a Jihad on them or not, but Sprint messed my plan up something serious. I played the calm role until they offered me some bull. I asked them to cancel my service and told them I wasn't going to pay a termination fee for some ish they pulled. They sent me to their "cancellation dept" AKA retention dept and offered me a retention plan that mirrored T-mobile's 1000 min. for $40 bucks...that kept me for now. But lessoned learned ya gotta put the fear in 'em

Anonymous said...

I'll keep this short and sweet. They have mis-posted $410 since December 2007.
I am now 10 hours of phone calls and 4 faxes later, and Chase confirmation that Sprint has posted my money without a resolution. Plus, late fees and reconnection fees to boot.
I've been told that the account # can't be accessed.