May I submit that Sprint's customer service or coverage, when considered
nationally, is not, in newspaper parlance, the story.
Sprint clearly has made a calculated business decision. If their chronic
complainers keep complaining, they're also continuing to tell their neighbors
about the lousy service. But consumers are a fickle lot, and easily placated by
time; force them to another company and they'll forget why they didn't like
yours.
But this is part of a pattern. For years, credit card companies have closed
accounts of people who either didn't use the card, or who paid in full every
month. Either way, the company was spending money to keep books on non-paying
customers.
Cable companies offer more channels and tout the per-channel price
precisely because customers who object to the charade have little other place
to go. It's the sole cable provider, or satellite, or nothing. So complain all
you want; just keep sending money.
In the case of cell phone companies, there is someplace else to go. That's
why they insist on keeping the disconnect fees high. They mark a $20 phone up
to $150, then discount it with a $100 instant rebate and a $50 mail-in rebate
-- but only if you sign up for two years and agree to fork over $250 severance
if you decide the service does not fit your needs.
Only in the past month or two, I think, there was discussion about on of
the companies killing customers' data accounts. The customers were paying for
Unlimited data, but it turned out their and the company's definition of
"unlimited" differed.
The only correct response to these tactics is through our lawmakers. If I
sit all day in a restaurant, nursing one cup of coffee, the restaurateur is
well within his right to ask me to depart.
He should not be allowed to charge me for meals I will never eat as a
condition of my departure. Unfortunately, right now that's legal.
And it will stay legal as long as there are enough customers convinced they
don't understand the complicated world of "technology."
The only reason restaurant operators could not get away with such tactics
is most people understand preparing food, and they'd understand if a deadbeat
was shown the door - but they'd never understand the deadbeat being presented a
bill for the next dozen meals he'd not going to eat.
-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Bill Motzing" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> If I were supreme court judge of all things electronic, having read all the
> interesting banter on this forum, I would say Sprint is guilty of not waiting
> for these so-called "unprofitable" customers' contracts to expire BEFORE
> expunging them from their ledgers, as it were. All it would take is a refusal
> to
> renew their contracts rather than "canning" them for this to be a lot better.
> Doing that would have saved Sprint the embarassing situation of drawing yet
> more
> attention to their already questonable CS from a potential customer base
> (myself included) who are already critical of the fairness of the indutry's
> contractual practices.
>
> It simply looks unfair given the terms of the contract agreement. And,
> economically, how much more is Sprint really going to loose keeping these
> customers another 6 months or a year while their contracts expire?.
>
> This leads me to the impression there is something beyond economics driving
> the
> action. It reaks of poor management, public relations, customer service
> training
> and customer service skills. Basically they are not spending enough on CS and
> that will come back and bite them because it looks like Sprint are greedy.
>
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>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
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