I think it's hard to judge about these things. I think many of these huge companies you can get trapped in a kafka-esque catch-22 where you can't talk to real people, or those real people end up disappearing, don't give you real contact info so that you can follow up with them if you haven't heard anything, etc. This American Life did a story about this within the past year or two that I caught a small piece of. It was amazing, and enfuriating.
On the other hand, I agree that there are some customers who can be abusive. After my initial setting things up with Sprint about a year ago, I think I've contacted them maybe twice. I know there are people here who have replaced their Treos 3 or 4 or more times? I don't get it. Is it that they have such horrible luck and I have such good luck? I've had a 600, a 650, and a 700P and haven't had to replace any of them ONCE. I also think there are a lot of people who are on these Sprint boards where people are saying if you keep calling Sprint reps and asking them for free this or free that, eventually you will get a rep who will give it to you. So you have lots of people who have time on their hands using up Sprints resources in order to get more of Sprint's resources for free. Doesn't seem like these people are ideal customers for Sprint to retain. They would probably rather retain customers who aren't as "savvy" and will just take whatever plan is fed to them at the Sprint store, and not keep calling in to get better/cheaper plans. I still maintain that a lot of this has to do with luck of getting a decent rep, and also that all of these companies have their share of good and bad reps, reps who are experienced and those who are green. My one horrible experience wasn't even with a mobile phone provider, but rather with Verizon DSL back when DSL was pretty new in 2000. I was working for a guy who's business was in a residence at the time and he had gotten DSL only for it to go out of service after a few weeks. He called and spoke to a different Verizon (I guess it was Bell Atlantic back then?) rep every day for weeks before he was finally able to get someone to come over to the house to get it fixed. It was truly a nightmare! It had to be escalated countless times and I think finally got somewhere when it went to some assistant to the president's office or something like that. This is one reason why I hate this huge conglomerates. Back in the 90's when you had a zillion little ISP's, you could find a mom and pop shop that gave personalized service and you knew these people by name and they knew you by name. Now it's almost as if the people on the other end are robots and you have almost zero chance of ever talking to the same person if you ever call back... > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > Don Pomplun > Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2007 12:34 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Treo] Re: Sprint canning users who complain too much > > Just a plus comment FOR Sprint. I've ben on the SERO plan for a couple > months. Rather than sit in touchtone hell trying to call (anybody, not > just Sprint), I used the email option. I always gets (an almost over > gushingly) polite response that is always right on. Most recently > questioned was my signing up for their Total Equipment Protection plan > for > which I had signed up. Somehow in internet Styx, it didn't go through. > It > has to be done in the first 30 days. An email, and a phone call to the > their third party insurance provider, and I'm enrolled, even though > it's > been about 60 days. System works well, and the rate is great. I gave > them > all plusses on the web satisfaction survey. > IMHO, too many folk have entitlement-itis. Silver spoon or gripe. I, > at > least, try to solve my problems first, then ask for help, having some > (hopefully) intelligent input into the process. > -- Don > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > >
