Sprint & Sprint Corporate Screw-Ups - Advice Needed

I am a new customer to sprint (as of March, 2005) and in the short time that I have been a Sprint customer, I have experienced a lack of customer service unparalleled in my history as a customer of numerous carriers. I don't want to bore everyone with the long, drawn out story, so I'll try to make this quick. Basically, Sprint agreed to replace a defective Treo 650 phone that I had, but in order to secure the return of the defective unit, they stated they would have to charge my credit card approximately $600 and then it would be reversed when they received the defective phone back (who does it this way...isn't it supposed to be "we'll charge your credit card if we DON'T receive the defective equipment back?"). Of course, they sent me the wrong model Treo 650 (w/o the camera) and when I called back and they told me it would be no problem to send me the right model Treo 650, what they didn't tell me was that they were now going to charge my Sprint account approximately $600 for the second replacement to be sent out to me. This charge, combined with my current month's balance (which wasn't even due yet) put me past some credit threshold on Sprint's account and so within a day or two, my phone was turned off (without me even being notified about it - I just couldn't make phone calls one day and this is how I found out about it). Regular Sprint customer service was completely unhelpful and couldn't promise me anything beyond turning my phone back on for a day or two (and since I hadn't yet received the second replacement, there would be no way for me to return the defective phone before the service was turned off again). I should also mention that my father was in the hospital right around this time undergoing a cardiac catherization (or something along those lines where they use angioplasty and stents) and I needed to be able to communicate with my family to know how he was doing. Being that it was a weekend, I had to wait until Monday before I could call Sprint Corporate, and I finally got through to a representative who apologized for the inconvenience, agreed to turn my service back on again and ensure it wasn't turned off, and credited me my first month's balance in full. If this had been the end of things, I would have been OK (unhappy, but I would have managed). Unfortunately, it was just the beginning. Even though I eventually got the second replacement and returned the first replacement and my defective phone promptly, Sprint apparently had a lot of problems receiving it, confirming it, and noting it on my account. In fact, they had so many problems that after I had confirmed they had received both units via UPS, my phone service was shut off a second time, and a THIRD time (after I was promised by the corporate representative that it wouldn't be shut off again)!!! Additionally, Sprint screwed up again and credited the initial charges for both phones back to my Sprint account instead of one back to my Sprint account and one back to my credit card account. Because the only balance on my credit card account was the Sprint charge and I assumed they would be crediting it back to this card (and even confirmed this with the Sprint corporate representative), I didn't pay the balance, and when it wasn't credited back correctly, I got hit with late fees and finance charges on my credit card. All in all, even after I got through to their corporate office and was promised that there wouldn't be any more problems, they screwed things up even worse. When things were finally straightened out, I called their corporate office back and spoke with the same representative that I initially spoke with to see what could be done to compensate me for ALL of these problems. I asked for three things which I didn't think was too greedy: to be let out of my 2-year contract so I could leave at any time (even though I informed them that at this point I wasn't planning on leaving since even though they had really screwed things up for me so far, the rate plan was better than I could get anywhere else), to receive the unlimited SMS messaging plan for free (normally $5/month), and to get a $5/month credit on my PCS Vision Plan (so instead of paying $15 a month, I'd only pay $10 - I'd read a bunch of places that Sprint was now even offering PCS Vision for $10/month in some places so this was hardly an over-the-top request). The representative came back after meeting with her management team (explain to me again why she needs to meet with her supervisors...I thought this was corporate, where the person I'm speaking to is authorized to do what is necessary, not to get approval from above) and told me that what they could do is give me 3 more months of service for free, and allow me to leave Sprint in the next 30 days with no early termination fee, but that she couldn't let me out of my 2-year contract permanently. I was fine with the 3 months of service for free, but given everything that had happened in the past, I really wanted the ability to leave Sprint at my convenience without an early termination fee. I argued for a while with the representative and got nowhere, and so now I have to decide within 30 days if I want to stay with them for another year and 10 months or leave and go elsewhere. The problem with leaving and going elsewhere is that most of the other major carriers (Verizon, Cingular, etc.) don't offer rate plans comparable to Sprint's (I'm on the $50 Fair and Flexible 700 minutes plan with $5 no roaming, no long distance, nights and weekends starting at 9 PM, $15 PCS Vision Professional Pack (includes unlimited data usage with my Treo 650), and 100 SMS messages per month). Does anyone know if any of the other carriers might be willing to match this plan, or provide something close to it? Do any of the other carriers even do matching or help out customers who are interested in switching to their service? Anyone have any other ideas or suggestions? Should I stay with Sprint? Should I leave? Is what they offered seem acceptable considering the circumstances and the trouble I went through? Any suggestions or advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks, and sorry if this post ran a bit longer than I anticipated

- marc

 

I might just check this out...thanks!

 

How's that? According to Sprint, this is an extra $5/month option??

 

Thanks for the info, but the voice and unlimited data plan alone (I use data way too much to not get unlimited) would cost me in excess of $105/month...way too expensive for one phone's service...

 

do u have a phone # for the retention dept.? thanks!

- marc

 

I agree completely. How can Verizon charge $24.99 for ONLY 10MB of data when Sprint gives you UNLIMITED Data for only $10-$15/month. Its absolutely ridiculous, which is one of the reasons I'm leaning towards staying with Sprint...

Hopefully Verizon and Cingular and the other carriers will wise up and adjust their data prices...maybe once they fully roll out their 3G High-Speed Networks...

 

Ok...so I was happy to let sleeping dogs lie and take the offer they made me and move on with my life. Unfortunately, it seems as if Sprint isn't done screwing me around.

I, along with I'm sure many of you out there, make use of the voice-mail option on my cell phone. I also tend to get voicemails sometimes that I'd like to save. When I was with Nextel, and I attempted to save them, it clearly informed me that they would only be saved for 14 days from the point I was saving them. Not sure how Sprint's system worked, I attempted to save a voicemail, and there was no warning given to me that it would be deleted within a certain timeframe. To be absolutely sure, I called Sprint Customer Care and verified that a saved voice mail would remain saved and would not be removed until I deleted it, and even searched through my phone's documentation and sprint's documentation (both online and offline) to ensure that there was no contradictory information. Unfortunately, despite all of this, my saved voicemails have been deleted, and I now find out that saved voicemails only last on the system for so long (although no one seems to be able to give me an absolute timeframe...I've heard 10 days, 14 days and 30 days so far). I called Customer Care and spoke with a supervisor requesting that my voicemails be recovered. She connected me to Technical Support, which informed me that this wasn't possible. The original supervisor had also stated that if it wasn't possible to recover them, compensation could be discussed and she would note this on my account. Unfortunately, when I called back the second time and spoke with a customer care supervisor (Paul Schmidt, ID #: 7527) he was incredibly rude to me, told me the issue would go no further and compensation would not be offered. Certainly not pleased with the current situation, I called the Executive Services/Corporate # that I had used in the past to try and reach someone. I spoke with a corporate representative there who was vaguely familiar with my previous problems, but would not assist me since at this point, I've been offered a lot of compensation already (all for legitimate problems that I've had and major screw-ups that Sprint has caused) and haven't actually made any payments to Sprint yet (not that I'm not planning on it, since I'm locked into a 2 year contract, but my past compensation for other legitimate problems has so far allowed me to not yet have to pay anything to Sprint...however, this is a totally new and separate problem and so it should be looked at without regard to past problems). She stated that either she or the original corporate representative that I had been dealing with would get back to me on Tuesday. All I really want at this point is the $5/month unlimited SMS messaging plan (which many people have for free anyway since they were grandfathered into it) on my plan for free. I don't think thats asking for a lot, but I thought I'd post a continuation of my problems on here and see what everyone else thought. Am I asking for too much? Is there any other ways I can get this compensation for this legitimate voice-mail deletion problem? Any other ideas, suggestions, constructive criticism? Any help or information is appreciated! Thanks!

- marc