Sprint’s dreadful customer service is CEO Hesse’s No. 1 priority

I could write a book on my nightmare customer service experience with Sprint.

I’ll give you the short version:

1) I Made the mistake of buying a Blackberry from a Sprint telemarketer. I travel extensively, and was in need of a new phone so I was actually glad the guy called. He told me that Sprint was offering a special price with rebates galore. Hey, Sign me up! I purchased the phone using a Visa card. The phone I ordered was the wrong one so I went to the Sprint store to excange it for an upgraded Blackberry World Phone. The store didn’t have one in stock, however the clerk kindly handed me their phone to order it from another department. The clerk then did an exchange using my Visa at the cash register, and I my new phone arrived at my home two days later. Cool.

2) Since I’m not exactly a tech-savvy phone genius, I returned to the Sprint store to get some help setting up my new Blackberry. They were marginally helpful, however they got me fixed up nonetheless.

3) I chose the Blackberry World Phone because as I said, I travel extensively. I was leaving for China in a few days and just as I do every month, I dial *3 to pay my Sprint bill. I was a bit shocked when the lovely robo-woman told me that my new balance was $1100.00! As I said, I purchased one phone, exchanged it for another, all on my Visa card. My normal phone bill is around 100.00 per month, and now I’m looking at an $1100.00 phone bill. I called “customer service” immediately to get to the bottom of it.

Oh my God! I spent two days, and a total of 9 hours on the phone dealing with one idiot after another. In two days, I spoke with 29 different people. I was hung up on, mysteriously disconnected with, put on perma-hold, and treated like dirt by these evil mutants employed by Sprint. I was yelled at, called a liar, threatened, insulted in a half a dozen other ways, and still nobody could figure out why my phone bill was $1100.00.

Meanwhile, I’ve got only two days to go until I’m on a plane for China, and I’m going through a living hell with Sprint!

On the third day, I return to the Sprint store to try to resolve the issue. The manager of the store dialed some kind of secret magical number and handed me their phone to speak with some big chief, or the “King of Sprint”, or whatever. The guy was very pleasant, and tried to help me unravel the whole mess. Turns out, I was charged for three phones. They charged my Visa bill, and there were overlapping charges on my Sprint bill. He credited me for part of the damage, however I was told that the credit for $700.00 on my Sprint bill wouldn’t show up until my next montly statement.

At this point, I was just happy to know that I had a working telephone to take to China, and I was glad to know that the issue was more or less resolved. Nevermind the fact that I was only in the States for a total of four days. Time I could have spent with family or friends was spent dealing with Sprint “customer service”. Had I not been on such a hectic travel schedule, I would have dropped Sprint immediately.

4) One month later: I return from China, dial *3 to pay my Sprint bill, only to hear robo-woman’s voice telling me that I’m past due for the amount of $700.00. Now, I’ve never been late with paying my Sprint bill. In fact, I usually pay early. I’ve been a loyal Sprint customer for eight years.I didn’t use my phone in China, except to answer annoying messages from Sprint which I was recieving daily.(Apparently, when you have an open dispute with them, they try to annoy you into submission by hounding you to death accross the globe. You can run, but you can’t hide!)

So once again, rather than go through another two days of degradation trying to resolve anything on the phone with “customer service”, I drive to the Sprint store. During my jet-lagged attempt to get some answers from the guy in the store, I was told that this was somehow my fault because “we told you it would take a month for the credit to show up on your statement”. He also suggested that I pay the bill, even though I don’t owe them money, and wait until yet another month goes by for the billing department to straighten it out. Rather than get violent with the guy, I marched out of there and promtly called “customer service” again to see if I could find some answers.

Finally, I get someone who isn’t on drugs to speak with. The “supervisor” more or less got it straightened out. It’s been almost three months, and I’m still waiting for that rebate. Never did get that “special offer”. After the mental anguish Sprint put me through, they should give me free phones and free service for life.

So while I was in in China last month, I was trying to dial information in the US because I needed a rental car upon my return. Since I had no time to figure my new Blackberry out before my trip, I had no idea how to dial 411 from China to get a number for Hertz to make a reservation, so I call Sprint “customer service” to see if someone could tell me how to dial information in the US. I was explaining to the Sprint “customer service” woman on the phone that I was in China trying to get the phone number for Hertz Rental Car, and the woman yelled “we are not a travel service”! and hung up on me.

… At least they’re consistent.

I would drop Sprint, however I’m in China again this month, and Italy next month. As grueling as my travel schedule is, I don’t have time to change service right now. I will say that whenever I can take a break, dropping Sprint is high on my to-do list!

I was a customer of Sprint 2007 to 2008 I found their customer service the worst I’ve ever seen. And Ive been a wireless customer since the old bag phone days!
The service and included options were grossly misrepresented by Radio Shack that sold me the plan. Then no relief was given or remedy suggested. I spent over $400 per month and could not get out of the contract. I kept trying to help them resolve as I had $1000 invested in smart cell phones.
The service charged for all my (supposedly free) cell to cell calls calling them unavailable in the billing . I had proof as I had smart phones but they would not listen.
I finally opted out and lost several thousand dollars. I am currently looking to sue Radio Shack or the manager of that store or Sprint in civil court to try to retrieve some money lost to these people.I cant believe an easy way to sue does not exist in the states. E mail me if you know of a way to retrieve my moneys. or if any one knows of a class action suit against Sprint. I have excellent documentation and phone recordings.
Tom
realyrocky@yahoo.com

Mr. Hess,
I have been a Sprint customer for more than 4 years, and was relatively happy until about 6 months ago. Well, aside from the constant overbilling and total lack of interest in helping me to choose a plan that would save me money and keep me out of overages anyway. However, while merely attempting to take advantage of my $150.00 phone upgrade, I have been lied to, given endless runaround, both in stores and on your so-called “customer service” line. I have had to repeat the same story to at least 20 different reps and 4 or 5 separate departments. Do they not enter conversations or contacts in the computer system? At this point, I have been in constant dispute about my bill and a phone which I returned and am still being charged for for approximately 4 months. I feel at this point that Sprint owes me, and if there was some way to get out of my contract without being absolutely raped again, I would leave today.

and by “forced” I mean competitively forced, not some stupid government regulation. The market will choose winners and losers.

I’ve had Sprint for over four years and have been a premium subscriber for the entire time (i.e. my cell phone bill is almost always above $120/month). The customer service I get, while not always perfect, has been acceptable but I’m also willing to spend time on the phone to get what I want. I find most people want to pay no money for a phone, get the cheapest plan they can get away with, then complain and moan about how they’re not being treated like kings.

As always, you get what you pay for. I’ve now taken Sprint up on their $99 unlimited package and am actually saving money each month. It’s a great deal and one which other companies should be forced to adopt.

I may be one of the few people who has largely experienced good customer service with Sprint. Of course, maybe that’s because they’re trying hold onto the remaining customers they have.

But even before that, I only had one bad experience with Sprint CS, which I still resolved in a single call.

I was recently given extensive credits and rebates to sign up with Sprint for another two years. I ultimately made money on the deal.

While Sprint isn’t perfect, I’m pretty happy with the service I’ve been getting.

I have been a Sprint customer since the year 2000. Usually the service on #2 calls are very acceptable. The service at its stores is however, another story. The employees are not very interested in handling issues. Frankly I think that many of them should be fired and replaced with only persons who truly are interested in customer service. On the most recent visit an employee was rude,insulting, obnoxious,and calcitrant, not to mention he was sloppily attired and now someone with whom you would want to do business. Sprint should hire secret shoppers to get the true lowdown on their employees.

I am a Sprint employee. Certainly, we’ve not done a great job with customer service over the past several years – especially in the consumer space (though business customers handled much more effectively). I am not a “pollyanna” – but I am optimistic about the near-term future of the company. A number of people on the Blog are beating Mr. Hesse for the sins of his predecessors – and while it’s understandable, it’s also unrealistic. In the short time that he’s been at the helm, he has made a number of moves that will pay dividends for the company – with customer care being No.1. I don’t expect anyone who’s written some of the posts i’ve just read to take this at face value – but i’m quite certain that as a company, we’ve faced up to reality – have it out in the open – and are moving as quickly as possible to address the issues. I am disappointed that we’ve gone through this period, but from the “inside” I can see that new leadership is working hard to cut the BS and make the improvements that are necessary to stabilize and support the growth targets. Now is a very good time to “buy”.

Company policies are what make speaking to the reps so difficult. Rudolph Hess does not see this. He believes saying, “Thank you,” at the end of every call is what will fix things. If he changed the policies so the Customer Service people had the freedom and ability to help people he might see a better response when the word “Sprint,” is mentioned.

Customer service and Sprint are truly the worst experience I have ever dealt with period. They do not get it!!! No empathy and willing to understand the concerns of customers is BS. Sprint ranks # 1 in my eyes of customer rejection and sticking it to you without and regard.

I am a SPRINT customer and never have I had a worse experience with a service provider. It has overbilled, misbilled and screwed up so many times that it is a wonder that I have not left. As soon as August comes and my 2 years from hell are over I am leaving.

Due to their complete failure on the customer service end, I truly pray that this company crumbles and fails and files for bankruptcy. They are getting what they truly deserve. They are and have ALWAYS been ONLY concerned about money and could care less about customer loyalty. IF they were concerened, why did it take a huge company so long to act ? IF they actually cared, they wouldn’t wait until it was too late. Sprint is ethically and morally bankrupt, just like United HealthCare.

Hess misses the point. Every department cannot handle everything that every department handles so they are instead wasting the customer’s time by keeping the customer in the wrong department. They have also taken away the things which could help the customers. Oh, a discount on a phone and a $20 discount will save the customer? Well, they can’t do that anymore. The staff is now despondent as company managers such as Madeline Davenport are using them as scapegoats to save their own jobs. There is so much misery being created because of this it’s making the situation even worse because the staff has lost its motivation and they are firing so many people now and replacing them so quickly the new people do not have time to be properly trained. It’s over.

Mr. Hesse,

Your comments about “handle time” is very confusing. First of all, how can the time frame change, when you have customer service representatives from a non English country answering your phones and they can’t understand the basic English speaker.

The real issue with customer service is that Sprint choose to outsource its customer service to a country where English is not the first language at the expense of its customers.

So why it is that difficult to understand the horrors that customers face when your customer service representatives do not have a 30% command for the English language far or less them communicating with the various regions of America and its English speakers. The calls normally take longer due to the language barrier. Example: Southerners??? Hello, New Yorkers???, Floridians???

Kebrinacrystal@gmail.com

Sprint
The rise and “fail” of a company. There was a time. It’s passed for Sprint. As soon as my contract is over. I may even eat the lost and leave. They even burned my 7 years of loyalty. I don’t have to say why. Oh so many knows why.

Mr. Hesse,

Sprint problems did not start overnight. I have three years of information documented in my Day Minders from 2005 to present of screw ups and attempts to fix them. The constant response of they system not showing previous calls and any documented information of the problems previously addressed is just amazing.

In September of 2007, Sprint called and offered a “Special” and what a “Special” it turned out to be. Three customer representatives later, three account service representatives and a reference number to assure that I would not have to address the system lack of information, and guess what? I have a printed conversation between yet another customer representative and myself clearly stating that the system shows no such discount nor reference number.

I am not trying to fix the problem, I am hiring a lawyer.

To say that Sprint has no human being conferencing the call, seem’s absurd.
Cellular company’s are bitter sweet.
The biggest issue with any cell phone company is technical issues that may not be properly explained unless you are technically efficient enough to understand. With the merger with Nextel, this did create alot of caous but microsoft had a lot of bugs to work out as well before XP became a success.
Odd’s are that if you are a sprint consumer you may have had your fair share of headaches, but you may have also had your fair share of “human” reps that had shown empathy and real concern in the issue/matter that you were dealing with and introduced a proper and fair resolution.
Not only did this comment seem ridulously redundant, the comment about “human” reps seem rascist.
Let’s face it, we want more than this worlds got to offer but customer service starts with every cellphone company and every cell phone company has technical related bugs to work out.
Larger cell phone companys are means to longer merger times.
If it’s taken this long to come together isnt that showing sprints dedication to perfection (ironing out the bugs for the better good of the consumer).
We live our lives with our eyes half open ~ keeping an open mind could have been useful to the hundreds of thousand people that left sprint.
Had they have stayed with the company and have learned to have been loyal,
Loyalty would have paid off.
Sprint will be recognized as the leader of awesome customer service.
For all who left Sprint, I’m sure that when every bit of sprint is securely intact and re-establishes its powerful reputation, all who left will want to come back. All in a matter of time as well, because I’m sure their new cellular company may bestow upon them an immense amount of thier own headaches to bandaid.
By that time Sprint will have already issued a “tylenol” to every sprint related headache and the crown will be put back on the head of its rightful owner.
Sprint will overcome anything that gets thrown in they way of their success. It’s just common sense.

Sprint seems clueless how to tackle their fall from grace. Until Hesse picks up a phone and calls his customer service representatives he won’t understand the level of frustration people experience communicating with Sprint–it is broken. New innovative plans won’t work until people feel that there’s someone at the end of the telephone connection that cares–it is a human problem, not a technical problem. Unfortunately, it appears that no one human works there.