As a ten year “Sprint Refugee” I have now found a carrier that not only has “forward thinking technology” but has policies that work with the consumer instead of taking from the consumer.

I have watched with great dismay Sprint go from one of the best customer oriented companies I have ever worked with to a band of thieves who could care less about who you are as a consumer. Hence the shift to the Apple iPhone and AT and T.

Case in point:

1. Early termination fees that a California judge has ruled against to the tune of $73.8 million dollars. These same fees you now want to collect from me and these same fees the rest of the industry has seen fit to abandon…except you.

2. My account with you. It has two lines. One of which you conveniently “left open” and now are attempting to charge me for even though you apparently closed my account last month.

3. Customer service reps that I called this week and was told they had tried to reach me via email, phone and carrier pigeon. Yeah right. I am easy to contact and the main reason I left your shoddy organization was the death of your customer service department.

So, here’s the final from me. Good luck getting any money from this 10 year Sprint Refugee…no scratch that. I have officially become an “Anti-Sprint Advocate” and for my first two acts I will be moving my fiancées phone from her Sprint service (yes you lost another customer folks) to AT and T. I will be also joining a class action lawsuit along with her this month against Sprint.

How your company could so thoroughly screw up a 10 year customer relationship will be one for Sprints epitaph, which if the numbers and media reports are true is happening faster than you can image. Your customer is no fool.

Here’s to Sprints untimely and spectacular demise as a carrier and the firing of its CEO who I assume is a mean spirited alcoholic shut in of some kind, because NO ONE treats customers as badly as you have treated this once valued 10 year veteran.

–
Cheers,
Patric Douglas CEO
http://www.sharkdiver.com
http://www.sharkdivers.com
http://www.sharkdivers.blogspot.com
http://www.guadalupefund.org
http://www.islandofthegreatwhiteshark.com
415.235.9410

I was contacted almost immediately after sending this email, being told that my problem was being directed to a special department for resolution. (Turns out it’s the same department that deals with regulatory issues.)

That was Friday night. Saturday morning I got a voice mail saying they wanted to work with me. I wasn’t going to worry about it over the weekend, so I let it sit until Monday when I got another voice mail from a rep saying she’d been assigned to my case, would be out of the office Monday, and would try contacting me again on Tuesday morning.

After some phone tag on Tuesday morning, we finally connected and she gave me my second choice from the letter above, without argument (until my phone started breaking, I’d been a pretty happy Sprint customer and had a good deal from renegotiating my contract last time — that’s another story — so I was open to staying with Sprint if I could get a new handset without getting locked into another contract).

Here’s my second choice from above:

“Second choice in my book, that would still make Sprint look pretty good and continue your revenue stream from me, is replacing my phone without me having to renew my contract (I’ll abide by the terms of my current contract). You still have me for more than a year — that’s plenty of time to suck profits out of me. (Oh yeah, I do a pretty good job of paying my bills on time — maybe one has been late in the years I’ve been with you — I’m what would be considered a responsible customer.) And maybe in that time you can earn a contract renewal by providing improved service. (Despite Verizon’s advertisements, I think your network is great.)”

So I got my choice of handsets of comparable value (”comparable” actually gave me a lot of flexibility from the deal I got). On Tuesday night my wife and I looked through the comparable handsets and decided on the fairly new Sanyo PRO 200 — rated Sprint’s best voice phone by PC Magazine.

Wednesday afternoon I called my rep back up and placed the order for the two replacement handsets (without committing to a new contract).

And although I expected the handsets to arrive yesterday and they didn’t, the handsets should be here soon and Sprint will have an opportunity to win back my contract renewal.

Here’s the moral of the story.

With most companies, you can work your way up the customer service ladder to get something resolved. But when that’s not working, don’t waste your time. Hop in a helicopter and attack the ladder from the top. You’ll get things done quicker, and almost always get the very best service the company offers.

I can’t speak for everybody (Allen, it sucks that you’ve been overcharged by $50,000 and are still struggling to get that back) but this letter certainly accomplished its job in my case.

I’ll let you know if there are any unexpected turns from here.

I also wrote an open letter to Dan Hesse the Chairman and CEO of Sprint Nextel. It is a good read so please consider reading the letter.

http://www.sprint-really-sucks.com/open-letter-dan-hesse.aspx