Sprint Cuts 1,000+ Customers For Excessive Complaining – Local/Florida News Story – WJXT Jacksonville When we had a PUC that actually worked for the public this sort of thing would never happen. Welcome to Corporatism and its riding roughshod over the public. Obviously the Indians in Mumbai must have thin skins since they are taking the complaints.
Hundreds of cell phone customers are being given the boot, accused of being too high maintenance. Sprint-Nextel is disconnecting more than 1,000 subscribers on grounds the clients call customer service too often and make “unreasonable requests.”
The 1,200 people getting dropped will have to find a new carrier by the end of the month.
A Sprint representative said the average customer calls customer service less than once a month, but the 1,200 clients getting the boot call 40-50 times as often.
found by Aric Mackey
I bet every business wishes they could do this with some of their customers. You just can’t make some people happy not matter how good your product is!
John C, the fact is that these people are truly undesirable customers and fucked-up people. I speak with the voice of tech support experience, that there is always those few hardcore, stupid and/or crazy people that nothing can be done for, and who drain away a highly disproportionate amount of time and money that would otherwise go to helping real customers with real problems. And I think just about anyone who has done consumer tech support – not dealing with computer-literate professionals, but with a cross-section of the general public – which includes idiots like those Leno talks to on the street – would agree that some people you simply have to pull the plug on.
Local news had this story this morning. Said that the way the contract with the call centers in India is laid out, that if you make more than twenty customer service calls in a month that sprint had to pay more to call center than they got from the customer for that month. Even the usually clueless talking head said that would be good info if you ever want out of your contract.
Weeelll,
The moral of the story is if you want out of your cell phone contract, just bitch, bitch, and keep on bitching.
And don’t forget to mention how much you hate those who can’t speak King Georges english.
Why does DU vilify idiots when they make bogus 911 calls…
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=12472
…but then act outraged when a phone company doesn’t want to keep the same types of idiots as customers?
The customers told to find a new service provider were notified by mail last month and will not have to pay a termination fee.
Ya hear that sprint customers, if ya want to get out of your contract with Sprint – so you can buy an iPhone – put the service department on speed-dial. 🙂
There is a segment of population that is utterly obnoxious, self-centered, pushy, overly demanding, dissatisfied and outright nasty. We have all had to deal with them at one time or another. I have had clients like that before in my personal business. They want everything for nothing, treat all of those around them like their personal lackeys, are always finding defect in everything. No matter how hard you try, they are never satisfied, and always ask for more. They act like they are doing you a favor by even using your product.
I congratulate any company or person that has the courage to say “You know what… I don’t want to do business with you anymore… you are just to much trouble and frankly I don’t need your money.” They can find another company to play mind-games with.
Read the article… these are people that are calling 50-60 times per month!
There may be a few idiots but I think most of the idiots are running Sprint.
I am a customer and as soon as my contract it up I will be an x customer. their service is horrible, they outsourced to India and now my wait time for billing is over 20min fo which they are now charging me for min used , my phone a treo 650 is the biggest piece of crap ever built I am on my 9th one in 1 year and not one broken from abuse (all software hardware issues) but my favorite is if you do call and finally get through there favorite response is
I do not have the authority to do that, and when you ask who does they say no one there does and they dont know who to call to get some one who has the power to fix your problem
I promise one thing. If I win this seat in congress Im going to be up the telcoms butts sideways until they start to live up to the deals they are promising
Companies “fire” customers all the time, it is standard practice. Some customers will consume support time out of proportion to their spending. When it gets out of hand, you tell ’em to take a hike.
But, Sprint support is horrid IMHO – I was quite happy when my contract was up.
There’s two sides to this one. First of all, as others have said, there are some people who simply refuse to be satisfied no matter what. I’d wager that with a company the size of Sprint, there are 1000 of those.
On the other hand, since Sprint has moved their customer service to a place where people speak with thick accents, are unfamiliar with American culture, worship cows, and work for peanuts, I can understand that a goodly number of folks would have to make more than the usual number of calls to customer service to get help. Nothing against India, bye the way, just that outsourcing tech support only adds to the frustration for lots of people, esp. if you are not used to hearing the accent.
Oh, and consider that back in the days of the PUC with balls, you didn’t have any choice of what service to use. To quote Ms. Thomlin, There was one phone company in town, and they screwed everybody.
John, there are numerous cell phone carriers in each market, so we are not talking about a monopoly. So why should the government force a company to provide a service to someone they don’t want to? If the government asked you to do that, you would call it slavery. A customer has the right to drop a company and a company has the right to drop a customer. As long as neither violates their contract with the other, this is perfectly acceptable.
I wish I had known this when I was a Sprint customer…
Some of you can moan all you want about how unfair it is that someone can “abuse” this knowledge to get out of their contract… But I say why should I care about that. Sprint offered a level of quality and a service and failed to live up to the level of service but there is no protection in that contract or any contract for the customer.
If a cell phone company wants my loyalty, offer me a flat monthly rate without a contract so that if you suck, I don’t have to wait two years to choose a competitor.
If they know I can leave, they might try to do a good enough job that I’ll stay.
You’d think if you had to keep calling customer service that many times that you’d be thankful they let you out of a contract, where they’d zap you for $150 for leaving early.
I do agree with the first poster to a degree in that some people are just born complainers. I used to have a neighbor like that. But, I doubt that’s the cast with all the customers described here.
Since when has a cell phone become a public utility? The last time I checked the land lines where, but the cell phones were not. Contrary to popular belief, they are still luxuries not necessities. I know that is an alien concept to many, but I think it still holds true.
Mike T
I worked as a front-line tech support rep and later a dept manager at a software company. I would agree that some customers are major pains in the ass, however miserable the experience of dealing with them, they were paying customers. Reading between the lines, I really really doubt that all these people were the miserable pieces of crap that 2% of customers are. More likely people who were frustrated having to wait on hold and then get the run around in the bullshit maze that is sprint.
Sure its Sprints right to shitcan customers at will, however, whats the point, if these customers were REALLY miserable they would have left . But they didn’t, which means they probably had open issues the Sprint morons wouldn’t fix. The majority were most likely calling endlessly because of Sprints failure to deliver service. Bottomline is that some moron executive douche wants to make a name for himself and ran a report on which customers call in the most and instead of asking himself “Gee WHY the Fuck are these people calling all the time” he saw an opportunity to look good to cadre of morons above him. Why fix the problem, just fix the symptoms.
I’d like to see a little more detail before I bash Sprint. Here’s why: You can cal customer service, and get credit for a dropped call. They’ll credit you 50cents, even if you aren’t over your monthly minute allowance. You can also keep calling about 20-40 times, to save up to $20 a month. If this is the people being cut, I can understand.
#7 and #11 – Couldn’t agree more. Sprint was horrible and I’ll never go back. I’ve dealt with their call centers and the reasons that people have to keep calling is because they never fix problems with only one or two calls. Good for the 1500 freed people.
Some customers are just unreasonable. We’ve had some who, on a $30 software product, have sent us fifty or more support messages. When we say “enough,” they’re outraged. (Another poster is right: some folks think they’re doing you a favor by using your product.)
This can actually be a disincentive to providing good support: when you’re really helpful to customers, some will start to contact you endlessly.
this should be standard practice for all support centers.
-no matter how bad (or good) the service is, there are just far too many people who *need* to complain as part of their daily life activities.
iirc. support costs are what killed many of the early PC dealers even though they made good products. (anybody remember Zeos?)
Morons will always blame the hardware when they don’t know wtf they are doing, or are just too dumb to handle or understand the technology they just bought.
on the flip side… at least now i know how to get my elderly grandmother out of a 2yr contract she got suckered into by a salesman who took advantage of her first “technology” purchase. (cell phone) -when all she wanted was pre-pay phone.
-s
There is a big difference between a customer that is unhappy and one that is unstable. Don’t complain, just take your business elsewhere.
#13, my thoughts exactly. I want to know why the hell this is news in the first place. Most of the cell phone companies I have had have this little bit of fine print in your contract that says they can terminate your service at any time, for any reason. If Sprint drops the complainers, it should reduce costs and make the company mor profitable, If Sprint drops too many customers, they will simply lose enough business to go out of business. It’s capitalism in action. Sprint isn’t doing anything illegal., leave them alone! Immoral, maybe, but what else is new in the world?
DAMN!
I wish I was one of those people!
Sprint is awful. I’m waiting for my service to run out so I can go to verizon. They wired the metro tunnels so the service doesn’t black out when I’m on the train.
#21. Just call and complain. You’ve found your out. Please report back on how many calls it takes before they give you the boot.
#19 – There is a big difference between a customer that is unhappy and one that is unstable. Don’t complain, just take your business elsewhere.
Comment by Anonymous Coward — 7/11/2007 @ 12:15 am
Okay… But how does the customer avoid paying the termination fee? And if the customer’s beef is legit and the company offers no resolution, then why should the customer be liable?
Mandatory service contracts are the crux of the problem with cell phone companies. Stop forcing customers who want a service to commit to the service regardless of that service’s quality, and there is no more problem.
#13 – Since when has a cell phone become a public utility?
Who said it was?
Contrary to popular belief, they are still luxuries not necessities. I know that is an alien concept to many, but I think it still holds true.
Thanks for your opinion.
Many parents, especially single parents and the working poor choose cells over land lines because it affords them greater peace of mind that they can communicate with their kids or get emergency messages from family or schools.
But more to the point, whether of not it is a luxury it still isn’t for you to judge anyone else for what they choose to spend their money on.
A $12,000 set of home theater speakers is a luxury too. Are you suggesting the buyer of such speakers has no right to complain if the speakers are defective?
Oh for the love of,
Try reading the original post — he said this type of stuff would not happen if we still had a strong PUC — Public Utilities Commision. So, THAT’S who said it was.
Second, saying that a cell phone is not a necessity is not my opinion. Here are your necessities (food, water, shelter — and even the last one is optional) It’s fact — you won’t die without it. This runs counter to the spoiled kids and lazy parents that think otherwise.
Mike T
#25 – Since you’ve decided to be a fundamentalist about your definition of need, I’ll elect to simply agree with you that cell phones are a luxury.
Now, answer my question….
A $12,000 set of home theater speakers is a luxury too. Are you suggesting the buyer of such speakers has no right to complain if the speakers are defective?
For the love
“A $12,000 set of home theater speakers is a luxury too. Are you suggesting the buyer of such speakers has no right to complain if the speakers are defective?”
Nobody is saying that. Of course you can complain, and if you don’t get satisfaction, return them, which is more than you can do with a cell phone contract…unless of course you are one of the “chosen 1500”. And if the replacement speakers don’t work out, you can most likely get your money back and buy a different product.
I’d say Sprint is doing them AND the silent majority made up of the hundreds of thousands of other non-abusive customers a favor.
It is no secret that a small percentage of customers typically use up the vast majority of customer support resources in most retail businesses. Ever wait in line at the Post Office or bank for a simple transaction and have to wait and wait while some idiot tries to cash six or seven third party checks or send a grossly malpackaged item to a bad address???
Actually, getting rid of the habitual moron complainers might just free up the tech assistance system enough so that normal people can get through and get their problems solved.
#27 – The point is that they aren’t solving the issues
My issues were never addressed. I didn’t care if I had to wait or that I needed to talk to a few people… My issue is that they told me to go fuck myself when I had a real problem. Why can I not tell them to go fuck themselves when they ask for that termination fee?
I’ll never understand consumers who side with global corps. They’ll never side with you.