complaints
Sprint wants Tracey Stewart to keep paying her dead father’s cellphone bill. Sprint is not
completely heartless: they offered to cut his monthly rate to $10 until the contract expires in September.
more »
Event.observe($(‘id_340995_1199547929’), ‘mouseover’, mouseOverHandler); Event.observe($(‘id_340995_1199547929’), ‘mouseout’, mouseOutHandler);
followups
Krystl and Sprint tell us that the cellphone provider has seen the error of its ways and decided that Krystl no longer
owes them over fourteen thousand dollars:
“They dropped all the charges and had told me that the person who had initially signed me up for sprint was supposed to put me on the new EVDO technology system at which they didn’t.” more »
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topposts
JetBlue Flight Attendant Takes Revenge On Passenger Who Asked Her To Stop Speaking Loudly
“As I left the plane, I saw airport security interrogating the woman as her freaked-out children watched. That image is still bothering me.”
Walmart: Santa Brings A MP3 Player Full Of Porn To A 10-Year-Old Girl
“The Hills want to know why Wal-Mart would sell used merchandise as new in the first place, which is in violation of its own policies.”
82-Year-Old Woman Sues Chase To Recover Life Savings
“Chase is refusing to honor a cashiers check for $19.700.22…she was told that the check expired after five years, and that her life savings now belonged to the state.”
Sprint’s Special Low Price For One Month Of Mobile Broadband: $14,062.27
“Krystyl signed up for Sprint’s $59.99 unlimited Mobile Broadband plan and isn’t sure why she just received a bill for $14,062.27.”
Capital One Pockets Traveler’s $6000, Ruins Vacation
“As a consequence, he’s “pre-paid” $6,000 onto a Capital One card that has been red-flagged and frozen, and Capital One refuses to budge…”
8:33 AM ON FRI JAN 4 2008
BY BEN POPKEN
232 views
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happy endings
Reader Rob tells us that the CSRs manning the
Sprint Consumerist Hotline get the same runaround you do when they try to talk to other departments of their own company.
more »
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videos
Krystyl signed up for Sprint’s $59.99 unlimited Mobile Broadband plan and isn’t sure why she just received a bill for $14,062.27. more »
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Event.observe($(‘id_337711_1198691963’), ‘mouseover’, mouseOverHandler); Event.observe($(‘id_337711_1198691963’), ‘mouseout’, mouseOutHandler);
success stories
A Consumerist reader reports his success with escaping Sprint without paying an early termination fee by calling the Sprint Consumerist Executive Help Line (703-433-4401), who were the only people who didn’t give him a line of bull when he called. He argued that the new fees Sprints was imposing were a material change of contract (see “
Sprint Mails Customers A “Get Out Of Sprint Free” Card“) and thus voided his agreement so he could now switch carriers and port his number without penalty.
Jeff writes: “I called Sprint and spoke with a customer care rep. I was advise that the increase in fee’s was government regulated event hough it states on the post card I got that “these charges are not taxes and are not amounts we are required to collect from you…”
more »
4:43 PM ON FRI DEC 21 2007
BY BEN POPKEN
8,444 views
32 comments
Latest by sarahsaysso: I just called Sprint to cancel after reading this article and reading the sprintusers & howardforum info. Thank God for this information. I have been with this company since 1999 and I have HATED their customer service. Why can’t I more »
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Sprint to pay $52.2M in back taxes to several towns in Missouri. [
CNNMoney]
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call centers
Sprint has a new CEO, and, you know, it’s a tough job being “the new guy” and being charged with turning around a poorly performing company. So we thought we’d give Dan Hesse a hand and tell him what’s wrong with their phone-based customer service, seen as being one of their major weaknesses.
We asked our readers for their thoughts and they had lots of neat ideas why Sprint customer service sucks. Some of them even have worked on the call center side of Sprint; their insights are especially revealing/frightening…
more » 7:39 PM ON WED DEC 19 2007
BY BEN POPKEN
9,019 views
44 comments
Latest by Andy_In_SanDiego: I have been with Sprint since May of 2007. Previously I was with Verizon for about 3 years. I was very satisfied with the support of calling Verizon, however I wanted better reception and mobile-2-mobile (most of my more »
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customer service
Sprint customer service reps can only fix 53% of of customer problems on the first call, according to an internal company document
viewed by the WSJ. In contrast, T-Mobile has a 71% first-call fix rate, despite Sprint having nearly triple the amount of CSRs. That is really bad. Why is Sprint’s customer service so bad? Do they just hire incompetent people? Are they too focused on metrics, where the most important thing is that they spend the least amount of time on a call as possible? Are the reps underpaid? What, oh, what, is at the root of this customer service conundrum?
Sprint Names Hesse President, CEO [WSJ](Thanks to TsarBomba!)
(Photo: sun dazed)
2:43 PM ON TUE DEC 18 2007
BY BEN POPKEN
1,957 views
33 comments
Latest by branddnpsych: Well to give you an example of one location in Victoria, Texas. Sprint has outsourced its customer service to a company Cap Gemini I believe, who in turn outsourced to a third company called spherion. You can see already the more »
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cellphones
Sprint named Dan Hesse as its new CEO, replacing Gary Forsee who was effectively fired in October. Dan used to be the CEO of Embarq, which was formerly Sprint’s local telephone division. 1997-200 he was the CEO of AT&T wireless for 3 years and worked there for a total of 23 years. He left that job to join a Seattle tech startup,Terabeam, which made free-space optical transceivers for Internet access in city downtowns. So the dude is has got some chops. Will his combination of experience and innovation be just what Sprint needs to staunch its subscriber base hemorrhaging? According to
this Bloomberg article, Hesse helped slow profit bleeding at Embarq by closing call centers and creating service packages. In Sprint’s case, however, he needs to open more call centers. We shall see.
Sprint Names Hesse to Replace Forsee After Defections [Bloomberg]
1:44 PM ON TUE DEC 18 2007
BY BEN POPKEN
506 views
13 comments
Latest by tmbg47: Anyone else think he looks a lot like Alan Colmes? Colmes image for reference (here’s hoping I can put tags in these things) more »
Event.observe($(‘id_335313_1198003443’), ‘mouseover’, mouseOverHandler); Event.observe($(‘id_335313_1198003443’), ‘mouseout’, mouseOutHandler);
Sprint cuts a deal to make surfing MySpace via your phone easier. Oh joy. [
Reuters]
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Mention coupon code MORE4U on your next Sprint phone purchase and get $25 off.
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cellphones
Sprint has mailed postcards to its customers saying that, beginning January 1st, it will stop charging so-called “recovery” fees and create new fees to replace (or possibly exceed) them. Sprint customers
are now asking themselves whether or not this is a change to the Terms & Conditions—if so, then they should be able to cancel their contracts without paying an ETF, or early termination fee.
more »
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customer service
Awhile back, Sprint got tired of us posting the contact information for everyone in the company, and instead
set up a number that went directly to the executive customer service queue. Lately we’ve been getting quite a few positive stories about the hotline, as well as one negative experience.
more »
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Event.observe($(‘id_331072_1196988444’), ‘mouseover’, mouseOverHandler); Event.observe($(‘id_331072_1196988444’), ‘mouseout’, mouseOutHandler);
Sprint Hotline Success Story: “I was excited when I read about the Sprint SERO plan and how it was open to everyone on consumerist.com. The only problem was that I already had Sprint, but I was out of contract. I signed up for a new phone and plan on the SERO website. They ended up adding a new line of service and billing me 449.00 for the phone. I returned the phone, got another phone and things snowballed from there. I have spent HOURS trying to get my bill adjusted. I have been in total SPRINT HELL for the past 3 months. At one point, my 50.00 monthly plan turned into 1100.00 (with multiple phones, late fees etc.) I spent 2 hours on the phone and went through 2 supervisors before my bill was corrected, or so I thought. Two weeks later a 300.00 charge was put on my bill I was told that one of the phones I had returned they had issued a credit for had not been received, even though I had in fact returned the handset! WHAT?! Needless to say my phone service was cut off when I did not pay the 300.00+ bill. Then I saw the posting for the sprint hotline. After 30 mins on the phone with a very pleasant agent, my bill now reflects a credit balance of 16.00!! Thanks Consumerist!”
The Sprint Consumerist Hotline: (703-433-4401)
The Consumerist
I Hate Sprint 