Sunshine and Light

Things shouldn't be this hard

SprintPCS has not been kind to us. Our first email to Sprint:

I wanted to write to address a very bad customer service experience that my husband and I had with Sprint. Which is a shame, we normally go to the Sprint store in blahblah PA, and have had excellent customer service.

We wanted to combine our two phones onto one account. We were moving my husband's phone onto my account. First I called customer service, on April 1, 2008, and they told me that we hadto go into a Sprint store. So on the same date, we went to a different store than our usual , because I was on my lunch break at work. We went to Store 461 on Summit dr, filled out the transfer of liability form, and gave him a photocopy of the driver's licenses. Then the rep at the store said there was a problem, that we needed to call customer service. We went out to the parking lot and called customer service, who told us that we had to go into the store, but that there
was a balance on my husband's account. We went into the store,and the rep told us that wasn't the problem, we had to call customer service. My husband called customer service while the rep moved on to work with other customers. I asked another rep why we had to play go between for the Sprint store and Sprint customer service. She said, "I know what you mean" and walked away from us. The store rep that had been working with us, called us over and told us that he thought theproblem was my husband was on the Fair and Flexible plan, which is no longer available.
In the meantime, my husband was on the phone with Sprint customer service. When the store rep said he got another error after transferring my husband's plan to something more current, I handed him my husband's cell phone so that the Sprint store and Sprint customer service would talk to each other. We arrived at the store
at the start of this saga at noon. I had to leave slightly after 1:00 PM to attend a meeting. The store rep was still on my husband's cell phone, and the issue had not been resolved.

There are a few reasons why I'm writing. The first reason is obviouslythat we're very angry about the service we endured. The most helpful person was the last Sprint customer service call center person. But by the time we worked with him, my husband and I were so angry that we debated cancelling our phones all together. That would be after we each individually were customers of Sprint for 5-10 years. The second reason is that I'd like to have the number of minutes on my husband's phone that were used to resolve this issue either restored or extendedfor the current calling period. I would hate for us to exceed our calling minutes because the Sprint store wouldn't call Sprint customer service. And the third reason is to point
out the process issues thatwe encountered. There should be a way to fax in
the transfer of liability form and our drivers licenses rather than going to a store.And I would contend that the customer store should never send a customer off to resolve systems problems or figure out why errors occurred when they attempt to make changes to accounts. The store should contact customer service and they should work out any issues.

Your customer website says "Sprint wants you to enjoy the best customerexperience." This was not it.

Thank you for your time

Anyway, apparently I was too subtle in my grousing because the response we got was:

Thank you for contacting Sprint. I understand you wish to combine your two phones onto one account.

To protect your account from unauthorized access and changes, it is important that we confirm the following information:

a. Your PCS Phone Number
b. Your email address on the account
c. Your Mailing Address

Please reply to this email with the requested information, and we will be happy to assist you.Thank you again for contacting Sprint. We appreciate your business.
Sincerely,
Matt K.
Sprint

Sigh. They read....The first sentence? Maybe? Or was that such normal behavior that the rest didn't sink in? Anyway, my reply with a CC to Chris was:

Actually, no, we got the accounts straightened out. I'm contacting Sprint to express my disappointment over the pathetically bad service we received.

and Chris added:

To be perfectly clear I spent a total of two hours in the store trying to resolve the matter. My personal phone was used for 70 minutes by the Sprint Store sales person. He only talked to Sprint Customer service (again, on *my* phone) after I forced him to because my wife and I had been thru *three* versions of "you need to talk to the
Sprint store" "You need to call Sprint customer service."

There has not been once single apology from any one or any attempt to make up for the two hours lost in the process of TRYING TO GIVE SPRINT MONEY.

Seriously, what is it that says customer service CAN'T APOLOGIZE when they give bad service? They didn't even address 90% of my email. My normal modus operandi is that I don't expect to have my ass kissed as a customer, just normal courtesy. But considering what a fiasco this has been, there better be some ass kissing soon. We're still not ruling out ditching Sprint.

Anyway, so when I go out to the Consumerist, I found this, which rings true in light of our experiences. Oh and this article may be very interesting if we still don't get an apology, and don't think I'm not asking for this too.

Me? Fired up? You're kidding, right?

posted by MyHusbandRules @ 7:04 AM